Why were security guards ignored in hotel quarantine inquiry?
How is Victoria’s hotel quarantine inquiry supposed to work out what happened with the bungled program if it doesn’t speak with the people who ran the security? The obvious answer is it can’t, writes Peta Credlin, and it’s wasting millions of dollars.
Opinion
Don't miss out on the headlines from Opinion. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Here’s the question: how can an inquiry into Victoria’s catastrophic hotel quarantine program work out what really happened if it doesn’t talk to the people who ran the security?
The obvious answer is that it can’t.
My Sky News special investigation features Andrew McLean, whose company established and then ran the security operation at the Rydges Hotel. It was what’s now described as a “hot” hotel; a place where COVID-positive guests were quarantined and as a consequence, a hotel with considerable infection risk.
When McLean ran the security, there was barely an issue. After he left, Rydges became the primary source of Victoria’s coronavirus second wave that’s now resulted in more than 800 dead and four months of house arrest for five million Melburnians.
In response to a legal request from the Coate Inquiry, McLean lodged a comprehensive 500-page submission yet, inexplicably, his submission wasn’t tendered as evidence, and he wasn’t called as a witness.
As well, theprogram features another security operator who was at the heart of the hotel quarantine disaster from the very beginning. Like McLean, he was a subcontractor to Unified Security, the NSW company that was given a $30m contract in under six hours flat on the basis of a few phone calls and text messages — even though it was not on the Victorian Government list of approved providers. He wasn’t called either, even though he, too, says he’s prepared to give evidence under oath.
Then there’s David Millward, the part-owner of Unified Security who negotiated this lucrative but disastrous deal. He gave a written statement to the Coate Inquiry. His statement was made public unlike the other two, but again, inexplicably, he was not called as a witness to give oral evidence under oath.
Why haven’t these important witnesses given evidence?
I mean, written statements are one thing, but they’re merely responses to questions that lawyers draft for their clients to then swear and sign. There’s nothing at all like being put under serious cross-examination in the witness box.
We’ve already seen government officials and politicians give evidence that is inconsistent and contradictory, so calling them back and testing them under oath is our justice system’s best way to find the truth.
Any chain of events leading to more than 800 deaths, tens of thousands of job losses, and billions of dollars of damage to business deserves the most meticulous of examinations. That this hasn’t happened, and is not happening, speaks volumes.
On what we’ve seen so far, the Coate Inquiry’s final report won’t be worth the paper it’s written on because at times it hasn’t called the right people, sought the right documents or asked the right questions.
There’s little doubt that Premier Dan Andrews wanted an inquiry that absolved him and his government from any fault for jeopardising the safety of Victorians, and then putting the state into lockdown. And given the gaps in witnesses, the lack of cross-examination and collective amnesia of most ministers and officials, it now looks like Coate will deliver the whitewash he needs. Even if the final report does hold the government generally responsible for this epic failure, by delaying it until December 21, Coate has all-but-guaranteed that any blame will be buried by Christmas.
By going it alone and not using police and the defence force like almost every other state, Victoria’s hotel quarantine failures were made worse by slow testing and shambolic contract tracing. When you understand just how comprehensive the government failures were, your only conclusion is that Victorians never stood a chance. This is why, where their leaders failed them, this Inquiry must restore faith in the system.
From the start, the narrow terms of reference and tight time frames said to me that the Premier set up this inquiry to fail, and that’s what will happen unless Jennifer Coate hears from the witnesses she never called but who called me, wanting to speak the truth.
It’s hard not to be angry that the media is doing the job of a multimillion-dollar inquiry and asking the questions that Coate should have asked months ago.
Tonight, my report goes inside the hotel quarantine system.
We look at the special deals for some people inside the “hot” hotels, workers with connections to Labor Party donors. The big money involved in these security contracts is staggering — so much so that at the start of the pandemic back on March 25, the Victorian Government Purchasing Board, the independent procurement watchdog, warned all bureaucrats that “in unusual times like these, it is important to acknowledge the increased risk of unscrupulous or ill-prepared suppliers … Please be vigilant about the use of suppliers, in particular new suppliers”.
You can only conclude those warnings fell on deaf ears given three days later, Unified Security, a company not on the preferred supplier list, picked up a $30 million deal off the back of a couple of calls and text messages.
I’m aware that the Victorian Government Purchasing Board followed up its concerns in writing to both officials and ministers following the Unified contract. But in yet another glaring omission, these letters have not been made public and the then board chair has not appeared before the Coate Inquiry.
It was only a month ago that we were fed a line that no one really made the decisions here; that there was just a “creeping assumption” that private security would be used over police and the ADF. That’s now blown apart. But what happens next — whitewash or truth-telling — all comes down to Jennifer Coate.
Unless further hearings are held without delay, and proper cross examinations permitted, I question whether it’s been a sham.
On top of the Lawyer X scandal, the Red Shirts cover-up, the witch-hunt against Cardinal George Pell, and the emasculation of volunteer fire fighting agencies in favour of union-run ones, this travesty of an inquiry shows that there is now a crisis of integrity afflicting the entire governance of Victoria.
MORE NEWS
SECURITY BOSS REVEALS CHAOS INSIDE BUNGLED HOTEL PROGRAM
DECISION ON SECURITY GUARDS NEEDS CORRUPTION PROBE
VICTORIA RECORDS NO NEW CASES AFTER REVIEW