Hotel quarantine: Neville failed to object to security guards

A damning final submission to the hotel quarantine inquiry revealed government officials failed to object to using guards.

Senior Andrews government officials, including Police Minister Lisa Neville, were “in a position to disagree” with hiring private security to guard quarantine hotels but failed to do so.

In damning final submissions to the inquiry investigating Victoria’s fatally-flawed quarantine program, counsel assisting, led by Tony Neal, QC, said Ms Neville, Emergency Management Commissioner Andrew Crisp, former Victoria Police chief commissioner Graham Ashton and Assistant Commissioner Mick Grainger could have objected but instead “all acquiesced in it by either not objecting or by expressing a preference for the proposal”.

Mr Neal also savaged the Department of Health and Human Services, saying it had failed to provide 225 pages of “highly relevant documentation’’ on issues, including the involvement the Public Health Team, Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton and his deputy Annaliese van Diemen, had with the botched Operation Soteria.

Police Minister Lisa Neville speaks to the media at Parliament House about the revamped hotel quarantine system. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Paul Jeffers

“For reasons that remain unsatisfactorily explained, it is apparent that the board was not apprised of the full nature of the disharmony, nor provided with relevant documentation evidencing the disparate views within DHHS as to the role actually played by the Public Health Team in Operation Soteria,” Mr Neal submitted, in documents released by the board on Monday.

Then-DHHS secretary Kym Peake instead “sought to paint a picture of harmonious co-operation and collaboration within her Department’’ but “the entirety of the evidence now available substantially undermines this aspect of the evidence from Ms Peake.’’

While it seems Victoria may never know who decided to hire private security guards in the hotels, Mr Neal amended counsel assisting’s theory slightly from a “creeping assumption’’ to a “starting assumption which, enforced by Victoria Police’s preference and in the absence of opposition, ultimately became the position”.

Kym Peake, former Department of Health and Human Services secretary.

He said there was no evidence any firm decision had been made to hire private security before a 4.30pm meeting of the State Control Centre on March 27.

But new phone records showed Premier Daniel Andrews’ former right-hand man, chief bureaucrat Chris Eccles, had earlier phoned Mr Ashton, and “an inference can and should be drawn that private security was mentioned in the conversation between Mr Ashton and Mr Eccles at 1.17pm”.

Ms Neville disputes that she was ever in a position to disagree with the decision to hire private security, or to be aware of “potential suitability issues”.

Her submission pointed the finger at the DHHS as the control agency.

Chief Commissioner of Police, Shane Patton, also for the first time named Mr Eccles as the person who told Mr Ashton private security would be used. The police have previously only said “someone” told Mr Ashton.

Following the release of detailed phone records, which were called by the inquiry after the Sunday Herald Sun revealed they were available from Telstra, Mr Patton’s lawyers submitted there was “contemporaneous documentary evidence supporting a finding that, at 1.17pm on 27 March 2020, Mr Eccles told CCP Graham Ashton that ‘private security would be used’.”

Victoria may never know who decided to hire private security guards in the hotels. Picture: Wayne Taylor

“Counsel assisting shy away from the plain (and only available) finding, which is that Mr Eccles conveyed the information that ‘private security will be used’ to CCP Ashton,” the police submitted.

Mr Neal savaged the DHHS and its lawyers over its performance before the inquiry, saying it had failed to meet the standards required as a government agency to be a model litigant.

It had also not provided documents, including one showing Prof Sutton had responded to an email about private security two months before he said he knew private guards had been hired.

Mr Neal did not dispute Prof Sutton’s assertion that he had not read or registered the references to private security in the early days of the program.

“Having regard to all the evidence on this issue, we do not invite the Board to find to the contrary,’’ he said.

He also did not seek a finding the DHHS had deliberately misled the inquiry.

The DHHS rejected the submission that it had not met appropriate standards, and said Prof Sutton had never instructed the department’s lawyers to withhold any evidence.

The submissions bring to an end the public phase of the inquiry into the bungles that allowed private security guards to catch COVID-9 from quarantined guests and seed Victoria’s deadly second wave that killed 801 people. The final report will be handed down no later than December 21.