Key question before hotel quarantine inquiry goes unanswered

The Coate inquiry has failed to answer one of the most important questions it was established to resolve – who made the fateful decision to put private security guards on the front line in quarantine hotels?

Further material produced to the inquiry by senior figures in the Andrews government and Victoria Police, including previously undisclosed call records, other communications and freshly sworn affidavits, has shed little to no light on why guards were preferred over police and Australian Defence Force personnel for a crucial role in the state’s pandemic defences.

Former police chief commissioner Graham Ashton giving evidence to the inquiry in September.

Sources familiar with the matter have told The Age that counsel assisting the inquiry, in their final submissions provided to the parties, maintain their previous narrative that the involvement of security guards was based on a "starting assumption", rather than a clear decision by an individual.

The final submissions of counsel assisting were prepared on November 17, after the further material was provided to the inquiry.

The latest material, published on Friday, puts Victoria’s former top bureaucrat, Chris Eccles, at odds with former police chief Graham Ashton over a telephone conversation they had shortly after a critical, March 27 national cabinet meeting, where the decision to forcibly quarantine all returned travellers was taken.

Neither man has an independent recollection of the conversation, but in a sworn affidavit, Mr Ashton said that based on a subsequent text message he sent to his AFP opposite a few minutes after he hung up, he believed he and Mr Eccles must have discussed the use of private security.

"I believe that at least part of this conversation involved Mr Eccles informing me regarding the potential use of the ADF to guard returned travellers during the transfer from their flights and the use of private security to guard them at the hotels, but my belief as to what he told me in this regard is based only on the inference I draw from the contents of a text message which I sent to AFP Commissioner Reece Kershaw," Mr Ashton said.

Mr Eccles was emphatic that he did not discuss the use of private security in the conversation with Mr Ashton.

In a sworn affidavit, Mr Eccles said that at the time of the 1.17pm call, he had no knowledge of any decision about the use of Victoria Police, the Australian Defence Force, the AFP or private security. The national cabinet meeting had finished only minutes earlier.

In a new affidavit, Premier Daniel Andrews reiterated he had no involvement in the decision to use private security and did not give Mr Eccles any instructions to that effect.

“I expressed no view at all about the use of private security as part of the hotel quarantine program,” Mr Andrews said.

The Premier's chief of staff, Lissie Ratcliff; Emergency Services Minister Lisa Neville; and Jobs Department secretary Simon Phemister all maintained in fresh evidence they were not involved with the decision.

However, by 3pm on March 27, Mr Andrews announced the state’s hotel quarantine program and referenced private security. He has said previously he has no recollection of why.

The impasse over who made the crucial decision has frustrated former health minister Jenny Mikakos. “The weight of evidence clearly points to an actual decision, not an assumed one, having been made during the course of, or soon after, the meeting of national cabinet,’’ she wrote in a submission to the inquiry.

Ms Mikakos referred to a summary of the meeting outcomes emailed by Department of Health and Human Services director Nicole Lynch to senior members of Victoria’s public health team at 2.48pm that day, which reads in part: “Enforcement by S&T [state and territory] governments keen for police not to babysit but called in as need (eg use private security.)"

The email was not tendered as evidence or put to any witness before the inquiry and Ms Lynch was not called to testify. Mr Andrews said he did not believe the summary reflected an outcome of the meeting.

Former Family Court judge Jennifer Coate is due to deliver her findings by December 21.

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