Hotel inquiry: Ministers deny knowledge of security guard decision
Two ministers have become the highest-ranking witnesses to tell the hotel inquiry they don’t know who decided to hire private security guards, ramping up pressure on Health Minister Jenny Mikakos.
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Two government ministers have become the highest-ranking witnesses to tell the hotel quarantine inquiry they don’t know who decided to hire private security to guard quarantine hotels.
Police Minister Lisa Neville and Jobs Minister Martin Pakula — key members of the crisis council of cabinet — said on Wednesday they hadn’t made the decision and did not know who did.
Their failure to identify the decision maker ramps up pressure on Health Minister Jenny Mikakos and Premier Daniel Andrews — the last two witnesses to front the inquiry before hearings wind up on Friday.
Ms Neville said she learned about the use of private security from Emergency Management Commissioner Andrew Crisp at a meeting on March 27.
Former police chief commissioner Graham Ashton also said Mr Crisp told him private security would be guarding the hotels rather than police.
But Mr Crisp had said he could not have provided the information, as he only found out about the hotel quarantine program after being told about it by Ms Neville at the same meeting.
Ms Neville said she went in to the meeting with Mr Crisp and Mr Ashton after she received a brief telephone call from Premier Andrews’ office, advising her National Cabinet had decided all returning overseas passengers must enter mandatory 14-day quarantine.
She said she believed the men would not have the information she had, but “it became clear to me, they were a bit ahead of me in terms of the level of knowledge that they actually had.’’
The Minister also said the first she knew Mr Crisp had asked for 850 Australian Defence Force troops to assist with hotel quarantine was when she read it in an exclusive report on the front page of the Herald Sun on June 25.
She said she sent Mr Crisp a text — asking what ADF personnel would do when they had no powers and people were not trying to escape quarantine — because she was “cranky’’ she did not know he had made the request, which was later rescinded.
Mr Crisp emailed her at 7.08am on June 25 with the request, but Ms Neville “did not notice or read the email at the time.’’
“It’s absolutely Commissioner Crisp’s decision, to put in these requests, and he was doing so on behalf of the control agency,” Ms Neville said.
“But it was a significant request … I just assumed as a matter of courtesy that the Commissioner would have alerted me to it prior to or just after having lodged the request.’’
As the inquiry counts down to its final days, board chair Jennifer Coate is still to discover who decided not to accept help from the ADF.
Both Ms Neville and Jobs Minister Martin Pakula on Wednesday said the Department of Health and Human Services was responsible for the botched program, effectively laying the responsibility for it at the feet of Ms Mikakos, who will front the inquiry on Thursday.
Mr Pakula on Wednesday told the inquiry he did not know why control of the hotel quarantine program was shifted from his department.
He said he was not concerned by it, other than being aware that his departmental secretary, Simon Phemister, “was a bit put out by it’’.
“It was something that had been seemingly determined at a bureaucratic level … there had been no prior discussion with me about that,’’ he said.
Mr Pakula also told the inquiry he was “rarely” briefed on the program by his departmental secretary.
Although his department contracted the companies, he said he did not know who made the decision to use private security and may have heard about it in media reports.
DHHS secretary Kym Peake denied she was attempting to deflect responsibility for her department’s involvement in Operation Soteria by discussing “joint operations’’ and “shared responsibility’’.
Under fiery cross-examination from Arthur Moses SC, representing Unified Security, Ms Peake said she did not accept Mr Moses’ assertion that she was using “bureaucratic speak’’ to avoid responsibility.
“It is a matter of profound regret to me as the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services that we experienced a second wave in Victoria and all of the consequences that came with that,’’ an emotional Ms Peake said.
“But I know that my staff and the staff of DJPR spent thousands and thousands, hundreds of hours seeking to prevent that outcome.
“It wasn’t perfect but there was enormous care and diligence to continually address risks as they arose and I am of the view that the control structures that were in place were appropriate.’’
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Originally published as Hotel inquiry: Ministers deny knowledge of security guard decision