Hotel inquiry: Chris Eccles still in dark over security guards at quarantine hotels
Victoria’s top public servant has claimed he does not know who decided to use private security guards at quarantine hotels.
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Victoria’s top public servant has claimed he is still in the dark over who decided to use private security guards at quarantine hotels.
Department of Premier and Cabinet secretary Chris Eccles — Daniel Andrew’s right-hand man — told the hotel quarantine inquiry neither he nor his department decided to use private security instead of the Australian Defence Force.
Asked directly whether he had since become aware of who made the decision, Mr Eccles replied: “No I haven’t.’’
The hotel inquiry was on Monday shown documents that seemed to indicate the highest levels of the public service, including Mr Eccles and former Chief Commissioner of Victoria Police, Graham Ashton, knew a decision had been made on March 27 to use private security instead of the ADF.
Notes of a Victorian Secretaries Board meeting that afternoon quote Graham Ashton as saying: “Challenge will be static presence over a long period of time — will end up with some private contractor or else the ADF ideally.”
Mr Eccles then says: “I assume a private contractor.’’
Asked by counsel assisting the inquiry, Rachel Ellyard, if the notes assisted his memory, Mr Eccles said they did not take the issue “beyond the realm of speculation … it has not activated a separate and distinction recollection”.
The documents also show Mr Ashton noting “in addition to other states we’re trying to keep the ADF presence back of house — to prevent the ADF presence obvious to the community etc.’’
Mr Eccles was also grilled on whether, as the head of Victoria’s public service, he should know who decided to use private security, employing thousands of people and costing tens of millions of dollars.
He did not directly answer, and instead spoke at length about the structures of “individual and collective decision-making’’ and “collective governance”.
It was revealed last week Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet secretary Phil Gaetjens wrote to Mr Eccles in March to offer ADF support if Victoria changed its “operating model”.
Mr Eccles said he did not remember what Mr Gaetjens meant and could not recall whether he passed on the offer.
“My records don’t reveal that I forwarded the email,’’ he told the board of inquiry, before saying he was “not aware that I did or I didn’t”.
Asked whether it would have been odd not to pass it on, Mr Eccles replied: “I don’t want to be in a position of having to describe whatever I did as being odd or not at the moment. I simply don’t know.”
Opposition Leader Michael O’Brien said the inquiry had seen “more cases of amnesia than the Alan Bond trials”.
“We have senior public servants who can never remember who made the decision, can never remember what was said at a meeting, can never remember who made the call to keep out the ADF,” he said. “Victorians are smarter than that. These people are either monumentally incompetent or monumentally dishonest.”
QUESTIONS AND NON-ANSWERS FROM VICTORIA’S TOP BUREAUCRAT
Counsel assisting the inquiry Rachel Ellyard to Mr Eccles.
Question relating to notes taken of a Victorian Secretaries Board meeting and marked: For Secretary’s Eyes Only:
Q: Mr Eccles, these are notes that were taken not by you but for your benefit by someone who was assisting you?
A. They are not actually for my benefit in the sense that they weren’t routinely supplied to me after the meetings. Notwithstanding the fact they say “Secretary’s eyes only”, this is the first time I can recall – and it is important because of its prominence – recall seeing such notes.
Question relating to DJPR secretary Simon Phemister initially believing his department had been tasked to run the hotel quarantine inquiry.
Q: Do you recall becoming aware that he thought you had given him the whole job?
A. I have no recollection of that and I’m not sure that this, that, particular reference triggers that recollection.
Question relating to notes of the VSB meeting showing Graham Ashton and Mr Eccles discussing the use of private security and/or ADF involvement:
Q: Does that assist your memory at all, Mr Eccles, as to when and how you had turned your mind to what enforcement mechanisms would look like?
A: It doesn’t assist me to come up with a contemporary understanding of what it was, of what was going on at the time. I’m sorry. If I take it at face value, but it doesn’t take it beyond the realm of speculation. But I’m happy to engage on the basis of taking it at face value. But it did not — it has not activated a separate and distinction recollection.
Further question on notes showing Mr Eccles discussing private security:
Q: Mr Eccles, I’m asking you whether it would be fair to say that this note would suggest that at this time, sometime after 4pm on the 27th, you had in your own mind an assumption that there was going to be a role for private security in the enforcement arrangements at the hotel quarantine program?
A. That’s not necessarily an inevitable conclusion because on one interpretation, if you track through the document, you have got an earlier reference to Graham Ashton saying that the ADF presence will be back of house; you then have a statement that the Victoria Police will be a static presence over a long period of time is problematic … Which then leaves you with the question of private security. So it could be as high or as low as me making a deduction based on — based on the narrative through the VSB to that point.
A question about whether Mr Eccles as head of the Victorian public service had a view on the fact no-one knew who had decided to employ private security “employing thousands of people and costing tens of millions of dollars’’.
Q: Shouldn’t we be able to say who made it, as a matter of proper governance?
A: It’s a really interesting and important question because it seizes at the issue of individual and collective decision-making. There’s a, I would imagine, an argument that there are a number of core contributors in the emergency management framework for the issue of securing hotels, that is the Emergency Management Commissioner as co-ordinator, DHHS as the controller and Victoria Police as the security experts. So no one of them is the repository of all information that goes to bear to the question. So part of the reason why we have things like the State Control Centre and we have governance that is collective governance is that we bring to bear relevant perspectives in making important decisions. So I, I have a strong view that the concept of collective governance, where you are bringing together the specialist skills of different actors to deal with complex problems, is an important part of how we operate. So you’ve asked for my response as the head of the Public Service, I can see some legitimacy, legitimacy in the idea of there being collective governance around a matter such as this.
Question about why he couldn’t find documents showing he had forwarded on an offer of ADF support.
Q. Are you able to say why you don’t seem to have thought it appropriate to have drawn to the attention of those who were running the program that there was this source of support available from the ADF?
A. I’m not saying that I didn’t. I’m saying that I’m not aware that I did or I didn’t.
ellen.whinnett@news.com.
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