Melbourne’s hotel quarantine guards paid cash to do nothing
Security guards are getting paid up to $2000 a week to remain on standby for hotel quarantine work and Victorian taxpayers are picking up the tab, while a picture has emerged of guards allegedly taking infected travellers outside while not practising social distancing.
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Hotel quarantine staff are being paid to sit at home, the Sunday Herald Sun can reveal.
Victorian taxpayers are picking up the tab for guards to get paid up to $2000 a week each, despite quarantine hotels for returned travellers being out of action for weeks.
The reserve hotel quarantine guards — airline employees and corrections workers, who took over from private security — are being paid to be at home on standby.
Corrections sources have disclosed that some prison officers are now getting more than $50 an hour until their quarantine contracts expire.
A former Qantas employee who secured a role as a team leader at the Marriott Hotel in Melbourne is understood to have been paid more than $2000 a week despite not having to turn up as there is no work.
Some quarantine employees have also continued to receive the JobKeeper payment.
Job advertisements specified that candidates would fill “casual roles where your days and hours of work will vary based on service delivery needs”.
The capacity of the program was slashed after the returned traveller program was halted in late June.
Taxpayers are also funding a multimillion-dollar bill for hundreds of hotel rooms under the scheme that have sat empty since that time.
More than a dozen hotels, including luxury ones in the CBD, were put on retainer deals worth millions of dollars to house returned travellers.
It comes as a picture emerged that appears to show security guards at the crisis-plagued Stamford Hotel allegedly taking potentially infectious quarantined travellers outside for exercise while not practising social distancing.
The image shows three security guards, one posing for the camera with his fingers up, in the laneway outside the hotel, and is believed to have been taken by a returned traveller.
An outbreak linked to that hotel has resulted in at least 35 coronavirus cases.
The Herald Sun revealed in July that security firms used by the quarantine hotels — hired by the Victorian government — had workers who tested positive after they broke social distancing rules, contributing to Victoria’s second wave of cases.
The Herald Sun also revealed allegations of security guards sleeping with guests, as well as claims of illegal cash payments to guards and a ghosting rort that billed taxpayers for shifts never worked.
The Stamford Plaza outbreak was later linked to a family outbreak in the southeastern suburbs, with a family member revealed to have worked as a security contractor at the hotel.
Some hotels are now being used for Victoria’s Hotels for Heroes program, which supports frontline workers who are required to quarantine or isolate, should they be unable to do so at home.
Workers eligible for emergency accommodation include public and private hospital clinical and non-clinical staff, paramedics, residential aged care and emergency service workers.
A Department of Justice and Community Safety spokesman said those employed in the program “continue to undergo extensive and ongoing training and were assisting with the emergency accommodation program, which also includes Victorians who are homeless and victims of family violence”.
Victoria’s second wave, that has seen a state of disaster declared, has been blamed on the failed quarantine program under the control of private security guards.
The latest genomic sequencing data, which has not yet been made public, is expected to reveal that many, if not all, of the second wave cases could be linked back to the program.
Shadow Corrections Minister David Southwick said the standby staff rort had further revealed the quarantine program to be the “single largest public policy failure in Australia’s history”.
“With contracted prison officers and other staff now sitting at home on full pay, it’s clear Daniel Andrews could not have botched our quarantine hotels any worse if he tried,” Mr Southwick said.
“It’s clear the bungled hotel quarantine is going from bad to worse, firstly hiring untrained and unprofessional private security guards and now paying staff thousands of dollars to do nothing.
“With ongoing COVID-19 outbreaks and staff shortages across our prison system, it’s unacceptable that staff are sitting at home doing nothing when they could be working back in our stretched corrections system.”
Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said on Saturday that Victorians deserved answers about the “serious failures” in the hotel quarantine program.
“Victorians know the ‘what’, but they don’t know the ‘how’ and the ‘why’ when it comes to the quarantine failures,” he said. “There needs to be accountability, there needs to be an explanation.”
“Victorians deserve that, Victorians want that, Victorians need that at this difficult time. They’re being asked to make major sacrifices.”
The quarantine program is being probed by a $3m inquiry headed by former judge Jennifer Coate.
As well as failings of the program, the inquiry is tipped to investigate whether the United Workers’ Union consulted with private security firms and the government to seek work for members that were stood down from other security roles.
Industry sources said there were no issues with this consultation, but that quarantine problems may have emerged later when these professional guards were moved around and companies began calling in subcontractors to fill the vacancies.
Jobs Minister Martin Pakula has vehemently denied suggestions that he had tried to assist members of the union, of which he is a member, when decisions were made around who should provide hotel quarantine staffing.
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