'No one' owns decision to use security guards for hotel quarantine, inquiry finds

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews says he intends to adopt all recommendations of a scathing final report into the state's hotel quarantine program that identified flaws with almost every aspect of his government’s setup and oversight of the scheme.

The ill-fated decision to employ private security guards for the program aimed at preventing the spread of coronavirus into the community was not able to be traced back to any minister or bureaucrat in the state government despite the inquiry reviewing more than 70,000 documents, retired judge Jennifer Coate has found.

In her final report, tabled in Parliament today, Ms Coate found that the decision to use private security guards, without adequate training in infection control, was an "orphan" that neither Mr Andrews nor any of his ministers took any responsibility for.

Former judge Jennifer Coate has delivered her final report into Victoria's hotel quarantine program.Credit: Getty

"Such a finding is likely to shock the public," retired judge Jennifer Coate wrote in the report.

"The enforcement model for people detained in quarantine was a substantial part of an important public health initiative and it cost the Victorian community many millions of dollars. But it remained, as multiple submissions to the Inquiry noted, an orphan, with no person or department claiming responsibility."

The Premier responded to the report by apologising to Victorians, particularly those who lost a loved one as a result of the outbreak.

"This will be an incredibly difficult week. There will be - there'll be people missing from the Christmas dinner table on Friday and I am deeply sorry and saddened by that," Mr Andrews said.

"My commitment is to not only apologise ... but to also offer my commitment to make sure that we do everything we possibly can to learn these lessons."

Mr Andrews said it was "less of an issue" that private security had been used because, he claimed, 3500 guards worked in NSW’s hotel program.

The failure to properly oversee their work was a greater issue, he said.

"That is where the significant breach of hotel quarantine comes from and the resulting transmission comes out of hotel quarantine," he said.

"If I could go back and get a daily update, as I do now, about everything that's going on in hotel quarantine, I would."

Ms Coate sheeted home a large portion of the responsibility for the security guard decision to the police chief commissioner at the time, Graham Ashton.

Mr Andrews commissioned Ms Coate to head an inquiry into the program after several private security guards and workers in quarantine hotels contracted COVID-19 then spread it into the community in May and June.

This sparked Victoria's second wave of COVID-19, which claimed over 800 lives and caused four months of tough restrictions that included a night-time curfew, widespread commercial shutdown and a ban on leaving the home for anything but limited exercise and essential supplies.

Ms Coate's report found that on March 27, when the hotel quarantine program was devised following an agreement at National Cabinet, the Victorian government failed to consider the merits of using private security, police or the Australian Defence Force on the frontline of the hotels.

The assessment that the military was not needed was made "without any proper consideration of ... what would be the best enforcement option".

"Instead, an early mention of private security rather than police grew into a settled position, adopted by acquiescence at the State Control Centre meeting." That meeting at 4.30pm on March 27 involved Emergency Management Commissioner Andrew Crisp, Victoria Police and senior public servants.

"The then Chief Commissioner of Police was consulted and expressed a preference that private security perform that role and Victoria Police provide the ‘back up’ for that model," Ms Coate found.

That position "was clearly persuasive" to others at the crucial meetings on March 27.

"There being no particular discussion or dissent, this set in motion the actions, that evening, by [the Department of jobs Precincts and Regions] to commence contractual engagement with three security firms," Ms Coate found.

This was at odds with any normal application of the principles of the Westminster system of responsible government.

Jennifer Coate AO

"The decision was made without proper analysis or even a clear articulation that it was being made at all.

"On its face, this was at odds with any normal application of the principles of the Westminster system of responsible government. That a decision of such significance for a government program, which ultimately involved the expenditure of tens of millions of dollars and the employment of thousands of people, had neither a responsible Minister nor a transparent rationale for why that course was adopted, plainly does not seem to accord with those principles."

The report was scathing of the Department of Health and Human Services. It found the department suffered from a "significant lack of much-needed" public health expertise following years of government under-funding. Also, it was the lead agency but did not accept that responsibility.

"Just as DHHS did not see itself as the control agency responsible for the program, it did not see itself as ‘in charge’ on-site," Ms Coate found.

"This left brewing the disaster that tragically came to be."

The inquiry was initially due to report in September but was delayed first by working at home constraints then by new documents, primarily from the Department of Health and Human Services, that were only provided to the inquiry in late October. 

Its budget of $3 million swelled to a cost of $5.7 million.

The report criticised the decision by former Health Department secretary Kym Peake, who resigned from the role last month after coming under fire during the inquiry, not to appoint Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton as state controller - the most senior supervisory role - for the public health emergency.

The exclusion of Professor Sutton, against his wishes, contributed to the view of hotel quarantine as a logistics and compliance exercise, rather than a public health program.

"It meant that those in leadership roles for the program were not people with public health expertise," Ms Coate concluded.

Of the guards themselves the report found that "the overwhelming majority ... did so honestly and with goodwill".

It was not their fault they got sick and spread the disease, Ms Coate ruled: "None of those workers went to work to get infected with COVID-19. However, systemic governmental failings led to problems."

Former Health Minister Jenny Mikakos was the first senior figure to resign over the inquiry in September after Mr Andrews used his evidence to lay ultimate responsibility for the program on her.

Mr Andrews' top public servant, Department of Premier and Cabinet secretary Chris Eccles, resigned next over new evidence showing a phone call with former police Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton on March 27, which Mr Eccles did not mention in his original testimony.

Mr Andrews said he would have expected Ms Mikakos and Ms Peake to resign in light of the findings, had they not already stepped down.

"If the secretary of the department were still here, I’d expect she would be handing me her resignation today, and I would accept it," he said.
"And I think the same would go for the minister."

Mr Andrews said there were deep cultural problems in the Victorian public service that meant bureaucrats were not properly briefing ministers on key issues in their remit.

He said the government would work to act on a recommendation of the inquiry to investigate processes related to ministerial accountability.

The inquiry released an interim report at the start of December detailing recommendations for a reset hotel quarantine program, which two weeks ago began hosting international arrivals for the first time since July.

Hotel quarantine is also currently mandatory for any people arriving in Victoria from Sydney's northern beaches and will extend to all of greater Sydney and the NSW Central Coast due to an escalating coronavirus outbreak.

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