Shannon Deery: Cost of hotel quarantine will make Victorians sick
Cost should never be a deciding factor in the fight against COVID-19 but copping $195m for our bungled hotel quarantine program gives Victorians even more to be furious about, writes Shannon Deery.
Opinion
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Not only was Victoria’s hotel quarantine program the worst in the country, we now know it was about the most expensive.
For the first time the direct financial cost of running the program has been revealed at an eye-watering $195 million.
The bulk of that figure, $133 million, spent on logistics and operating costs by June 30.
The rest was spent in the months after until September 30.
Context, of course, is critical.
But comparing Victoria’s spend to other states doesn’t make it any more palatable.
Queensland’s program until September cost about $24 million.
In New South Wales the total cost is not yet clear.
By June the government there had spent about $50 million.
They say they’ll need funding to the tune of $140 million to see the year out.
Not that our northern cousins will foot the bill.
Premier Gladys Berejiklian has made it clear she wants a refund from other states and territories.
It’s only fair, she says, given NSW processed almost half of all returned travellers coming back to Australia.
If she gets her way, it’s hard to see how NSW will top our spend.
Victorians have a right to be angry.
Not only did we fork out more than anyone else in the country, we didn’t get what we paid for.
We didn’t get the security of a system that properly quarantined people and kept coronavirus at bay.
We got a broken system run by private security contractors that slept on the job and let the wildly infectious COVID-19 loose on to Melbourne.
We got a second wave that never had to happen.
We lost 800 lives and tens of thousands of jobs.
We suffered one of the longest and strictest lockdowns in the world.
And we will endure the economic consequences for years to come.
In any other situation paying for services with such major faults would see compensation or a refund almost certainly guaranteed.
Some people may now choose to sue the government for damages. Indeed some cases are already on foot.
Whatever happens, the taxpayer still loses.
Of course every economy in the world is suffering because of this pandemic.
And no one would rightly argue that in fighting it, cost should ever be a deciding factor in choosing what measures to take.
If the program worked, no one would be questioning the $195 million spend.
But it didn’t. And we should.