Program chiefs aware of hotel quarantine issues

Explosive documents show senior bureaucrats were aware of problems with private security within two days of the hotel quarantine program being established.

Documents from inside Emergency Management Victoria show senior bureaucrats were aware of problems with private security within two days of the hotel quarantine program being established.

The Herald Sun has obtained copies of minutes of March meetings at the State Control Centre of the committee of public servants in charge of Operation Soteria, the official name of the program.

The meetings were attended by Emergency Management Commissioner Andrew Crisp, Deputy State Controller Chris Eagle, State Controller of Health Andrea Spiteri, as well as senior public servants from the Department of Premier and Cabinet, Department of Health and Human Services, Transport, Jobs, Precincts and the Regions, and representatives of Victoria Police.

Andrew Crisp at the COVID -19 Hotel Quarantine Inquiry.

Minutes of the meetings held on March 30 and 31 both list: “Issues with private security” under the heading “key issues, items for review”. It is not clear if the minutes have been provided to inquiry — led by retired judge Jennifer Coate — into the bungled program.

These operational minutes were used to inform the daily state situation reports that were distributed to key cabinet members, the chief health officer, cabinet chiefs of staff and departmental secretariats.

The inquiry did not call the head of the company that ran security at one of the hotels, despite a 500-page submission listing breaches of quarantine protocols and allegations against Unified Security, the company that received most of the security work.

One of the reasons Unified was given such a large slice of the work was supposedly because it could provide PPE to its staff immediately.

The Rydges Hotel where a guard tested positive

But according to the Operation Soteria minutes for March 29, a senior DJPR official said: “We only have enough PPE for DJPR staff, we need more for contractors being used.”

The Herald Sun has also obtained an unredacted copy of the Operation Soteria operations plan written a day after the National Cabinet established the hotel quarantine program, which shows Victoria Police hid references to its role in security for the program.

Under the section “Reception”, Victoria Police is listed as being responsible for “Preparation and establishment of State-side security”.

This was blacked out in the version made public by the Coate Inquiry at the request of lawyers for Victoria Police.

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Originally published as Program chiefs aware of hotel quarantine issues