Peta Credlin: Spin is the only test for leadership in Victoria

The botched hotel quarantine program was a scandal but this whitewash of a report is an even bigger one, says Peta Credlin.

I DON’T know what’s worse — a Victorian government that arrogantly went it alone and set up a hotel quarantine program headed for catastrophe from the outset, or a justice system that has seemingly compounded its failings with a report that’s little more than a whitewash.

And it’s not just me asking these questions on behalf of the dead but someone inside the premier’s inner circle when things went so disastrously wrong - the former health minister Jenny Mikakos - who issued an explosive statement accusing Andrews and Inquiry Chair Jennifer Coate of what amounts to a little better than a conspiracy to withhold the full truth from the people of Victoria. That’s a big accusation to make against her omnipotent one-time boss but that’s what she did when she accused him of “another masterclass in political deflection”, and demanded Coate release the full and unredacted phone records “including the premier’s calls in their entirety”.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has finally apologised. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Andrew Henshaw

So it’s safe to assume there will be no exchange of Christmas cards between these once close comrades.

Daniel Andrews might have finally seen fit to recognise that over 800 families will have an empty chair on Christmas Day and, for that, he offered an apology. It was his usual game of media spin and manipulation, and for the most part, his boosters would have argued he had got away with it. But the Mikakos statement is political dynamite and despite it’s proximity to the Christmas media shutdown, it’s a worrying sign for Labor that the former minister is determined to repair her reputation by ensuring the truth gets told. And with each blow from Mikakos, it’s the legal reputation of Jennifer Coate that suffers too.

While the Coate Report crows it considered more than 70,000 documents, looking at the final instalment you have to question how many were actually read, and given the people not called to give evidence – such as the premier’s chief of staff, or the owner of the security company that picked up a $30m contract in under six hours flat – whether the inquiry was even after the truth. Yes, there are damning findings but, incredibly and reprehensibly, no one’s to blame. Frankly, it’s a disgrace.

The Coate Report found that 99 per cent of Victoria’s second wave came from returned travellers out of the Rydges and Stamford Plaza hotels. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Geraghty

Without any due process, a $195m program was established to keep the state safe; it relied on untrained private security guards, no one was really in charge, and there was no ministerial oversight. Yet no heads should roll. Really? Consider this: you’re a premier faced with an unprecedented problem required to do something never before tried, namely the immediate mobilisation of empty hotels to house thousands of returning travellers, some of whom have the pandemic virus.

Surely the first question you’d ask yourself is: who’s going to run this and how will it be managed? But if the Coate Report is to be believed, Victoria broke with the national cabinet to use private security rather than the police and military as in every other state, yet no one actually made that fateful decision.

Government does not work like that, and no one should fall for the spin that it does.

Despite an officials’ meeting at 12.30pm on Friday, March 27 that discussed security arrangements, a phone call at 1.17pm from the then head of the premier’s department reassuring the then police chief that private security would be used, a 2pm meeting between the police minister, police chief and emergency management commissioner confirming private security arrangements, and a 3.15pm public statement by the premier private security would be Victoria’s way forward, Coate found the decision to use private security emerged only from another officials’ meeting at 4.30pm (which, conveniently, no minister attended).

This is just not credible. After all, the Premier announced it himself more than an hour earlier, and no one believes Andrews is the sort of leader who backtracks on a unanimous decision of national cabinet to announce something he doesn’t agree with or a decision he didn’t make, but that’s what Coate asks us to swallow.

And it’s the phone records from this very day that Mikakos is demanding are released in full.

Jennifer Coate did find the lack of “contemporaneous rationale” for such a big decision was “likely to shock the public”. Yet no one should be held responsible, Coate seems to suggest. Even though awarding a $30m contract to an interstate security company was outside the proper procurement processes, there are no consequences for the man who signed the contract, Jobs Department secretary Simon Phemister.

So, too, Jobs Minister Martin Pakula who said in evidence he didn’t even know about the contract until “July or August” despite Coate saying in her report, “it was a failure of government decision-making to contract a firm that had previously been refused admission to the SPC (State Purchase Contract) for security services, for what became very significant sums of money, and then to allocate so much work to that firm”.

Former Health Minister Jenny Mikakos was not recalled for proper cross-examination. Picture: AAP

For those who want to suspend reality and pretend the second wave had nothing to do with the Premier’s poor governance, the Coate Report finds 99 per cent of it came from returned travellers out of the Rydges and Stamford Plaza hotels.

It’s hardly surprising Coate could not uncover who made the decision to set up these hotels as “hot” facilities for infected cases when she didn’t even bother to call the security firm first on the ground — even though the firm’s owner stood ready to give evidence.

Coate didn’t recall Mikakos, either, even though she asked to be brought back after the Premier threw her under the bus in his evidence. Yesterday he said if she hadn’t already resigned he would have sought her resignation, and that of her health department secretary, Kym Peake. Forget competence, integrity and honesty, it appears spin is about the only test for leadership in this state.

Does anything I’ve read in this report so far surprise me? Sadly, no. Because Coate rarely asked the right questions of the right people. The hotel quarantine program was a scandal but this whitewash of a report is an even bigger one.

It’s now up to the Prime Minister to ensure justice is delivered with a full, national Royal Commission – nothing less is acceptable.

Originally published as Peta Credlin: Spin is the only test for leadership in Victoria