Melbourne hotel quarantine failures ‘could have been foreseen’, inquiry told
Counsel assisting the inquiry into Melbourne’s bungled hotel quarantine program has given a damning recap of evidence to the board.
Coronavirus
Don't miss out on the headlines from Coronavirus. Followed categories will be added to My News.
No single person has admitted being in charge of Victoria’s deadly hotel quarantine program and instead pointed at others, an inquiry has heard.
Counsel assisting the inquiry into the program, Rachel Ellyard, gave a damning recap of evidence to the board, saying it showed confusion, a lack of accountability, and deficiencies that were obvious before the COVID-19 outbreaks occurred at the Rydges and Stamford Plaza hotels.
“The witnesses that have been called thus far repeatedly emphasised that all of those various decisions were made by other people rather than by them,’’ she said.
Ms Ellyard said it would be open for the board to find that while the use of hotels to quarantine potentially infectious people was unprecedented, factors that played a part in the COVID outbreaks, such as poor infection control, were not unprecedented.
“These factors all contributed to an increased risk which sadly eventuated. The Board may well find that these risks were foreseeable and may have actually been foreseen had there been an appropriate level of health focus in the program from the top down to the bottom,’’ she said.
Quarantine breaches at the hotels seeded 99 per cent of Victoria’s second wave of COVID-19, and led to the deaths of more than 750 people.
The inquiry has been running for a month but has so far failed to confirm who made the disastrous decision to use private security; who refused offers of assistance from the Australian Defence Force; and who was ultimately in charge.
“No single person, for example, has accepted that they were in control of Operation Soteria (the quarantine program),’’ Ms Ellyard told board chair Jennifer Coate.
“Many who might have been assumed to be in charge have pointed to others.’’
She said the evidence indicated the Department of Health and Human Services was the control agency and “therefore the agency in charge of Operation Soteria and … able to control other agencies’ activities within the response.
“(The) Department of Jobs, Precincts and Regions had a significant supporting role in providing logistics support … but beyond that, who was responsible for and accountable for what occurred within Operation Soteria remains the subject of inconsistent evidence,’’ she said.
“The State Controller, who sits towards the top of the emergency management governance structure, reporting only to the Emergency Management Commissioner, gave evidence that the Chief Health Officer (Professor Brett Sutton) was ultimately in charge of the pandemic response, but the Chief Health Officer’s evidence was that his team had no oversight of Operation Soteria.
“The Emergency Management Commissioner, Andrew Crisp, gave evidence that it was the Deputy State Controller, Mr (Chris) Eagle, sharing the role with another, who was responsible for Operation Soteria, but Mr Eagle’s own evidence was that he didn’t exercise control.’’
Ms Ellyard said Prof Sutton has “extensive’’ Commonwealth powers under the Biosecurity Act which required people to provide information, undergo testing, isolate and quarantine, “but he didn’t use those powers.
“He is vested with a similar suite of powers under the Victorian Public Health and Wellbeing Act. He didn’t use those powers,’’ she said.
Ms Ellyard said the question of whose idea it was to use private security guards “remains a vexed one.’’
Hearings will conclude next week when ministers including Premier Daniel Andrews and senior departmental secretaries will be called to give evidence.
Those who will appear include ministers Jenny Mikakos, Martin Pakula and Lisa Neville, and secretaries Chris Eccles, Simon Phemister and Kym Peake.
MORE NEWS
HEALTH CHIEF OFFERED SUTTON USE OF ADF TROOPS
THE TEXT MESSAGE THAT SECURE A $44M PAYDAY