How can Andrews deny troops offer in light of email trail?
As Premier Daniel Andrews constantly likes to remind us, the hotel quarantine probe is a judicial inquiry. So why did he deny the federal government offered the help of the ADF when he must have known this could be disproven, writes James Campbell.
James Campbell
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For weeks the Andrews Government has been tying itself in knots over the question “who was responsible for the decision to use security guards in hotel quarantine?” for reasons that make less sense with every day that passes.
Last month the Premier told a parliamentary committee it was “fundamentally incorrect” there were hundreds of ADF staff on offer from the federal government. This prompted a furious response from Canberra — as far as the ADF and federal government was concerned there had been an offer.
The next day Victoria’s Emergency Management Commissioner Andrew Crisp put out a statement that said while the ADF had been involved in planning meetings on March 27 he had not sought and they had not offered assistance. In his initial statement to the Coate Inquiry he said the first time he had heard of the hotel quarantine program was when he saw Scott Morrison announce it on TV.
Then three days ago he put in another statement saying now he’d checked his notes he found he’d actually learned about it in a meeting earlier that day. Crisp’s memory had been jogged by the statement of former Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton which disclosed that before the March 27 meeting with the ADF that we all knew about, there’d been this other earlier meeting.
Why was that important? Because, Lisa Neville, the Police and Emergency Services Minister had been in that one. As the Premier constantly likes to remind us, this is a judicial inquiry. But apparently one of the central figures in this saga was allowed by the government’s lawyers to submit a statement to it that had been drafted without reference to the relevant documents.
You have to wonder how that could have happened. You also have to wonder how the Premier could have said it was fundamentally incorrect to claim there was an ADF offer given the federal government has now released emails between the top public servants in Canberra and Melbourne showing there clearly was.
PREMIER’S HOTEL QUARANTINE CLAIM SHATTERED