Exclusive: Hotel quarantine staff paid $78m to do nothing

Taxpayers forked out to pay Victorian hotel quarantine staff while the program was suspended during the deadly second wave, it can be revealed.

Hotel quarantine workers still were paid while the program was suspended. Picture: William West/AFP.

Victorians forked out $78 million for hotel quarantine workers to do nothing.

The Saturday Herald Sun can reveal payments were made to 1040 workers for five months when there were no flights into Victoria and the program was on standby.

Of those just 225 undertook alternative duties and were redeployed to other tasks.

Some of the reserve hotel quarantine guards — airline employees and corrections workers, who took over from private security — also continued to receive the JobKeeper payment.

Others earned more than $50 an hour until their quarantine contracts expired.

Taxpayers also funded a multimillion-dollar bill for hundreds of hotel rooms under the scheme that also sat empty.

More than a dozen hotels, including luxury ones in the CBD, were put on retainer deals worth millions of dollars to house returned travellers.

Opposition police and community safety spokesman David Southwick slammed the spend as a waste of taxpayer dollars.

“Daniel Andrews handing tens of millions of dollars to staff sitting at home while international flights were suspended is a slap in the face to every Victorian taxpayer doing it tough,” he said.

“It’s disgraceful that while countless Victorians were put out of work or had their livelihoods ruined by Daniel Andrews second wave, staff employed in hotel quarantine were receiving $2000 a week without lifting a finger.

“This enormous wages waste is the cherry on top of the worst public policy failure in Victoria history, which saw the deaths of 801 Victorians, 200,000 jobs lost and immeasurable social harms.”

Hotel quarantine resumed in December. Picture: David Crosling.

The $195 million hotel quarantine program was largely put on ice in June – running only as emergency accommodation for frontline health and emergency workers, the homeless, and victims of family violence – after the virus leaked from within Rydges on Swanston and Stamford Plaza Hotel.

It seeded 99 per cent of cases in Victoria’s disastrous second wave, which killed 801 people and wreaked social and economic havoc as a result of sustained lockdowns.

A government spokeswoman said the ongoing recruitment and training of the quarantine task force was critical to ensuring Victoria was well-prepared for the return of international travellers.

“Resident Support Officers and Team Leaders received extensive inductions and training on the new operating model – including live on-site simulations,” she said.

“They provided critical support to existing quarantine accommodation programs and the coronavirus response through other roles, including assisting with the emergency accommodation quarantine program, which supported Victorians who are homeless and victims of family violence.

“They were also based at the Park Royal Hotel, supporting returned travellers and maritime workers who had gained exemptions to return to Victoria on compassionate or medical grounds, as well as undertaking doorknocking contact tracing activities for DHHS.”

The government would not comment on how much it paid for empty rooms saying the arrangements were commercial-in-confidence.

International flights into Victoria resumed on December 7, with new agency COVID-19 Quarantine Victoria taking control of the new hotel quarantine program.