Questions over cover-ups at Victoria’s Department Health and Human Services

The $24 million Community Chef business was established in 2010 by a consortium of 13 Melbourne councils.

When government departments and public servants engage in a massive cover up like the Victorian hotel quarantine disaster it is not normally their first cover up exercise.

So, before we get to the bottom of how 600 people this year lost their lives we can expect a number of minor prelude bungles that also need to be covered up. Those cover ups become vital in uncovering the truth behind the major event.

And so it was no surprise to discover that the massive cover up of the Victorian quarantine deaths had a prelude.

And that prelude looks set to lead to court cases that will help us lift the veil of secrecy surrounding the hotel quarantine decisions.

Its fascinating that the prelude has a remarkable resemblance to the Watergate cover-up. You will remember that President Nixon was brought undone mainly via a missing portion of a tape recording.

Australia’s Watergate prelude also has a missing tape extract – this time it’s a video. And as the US Watergate, the media is on the hunt.

Food for thought

Normally I would not comment on the closure of a relatively small food operation in the Melbourne suburb of Dandenong but given it is a precursor to Victoria’s quarantine cover up, it is important.

Some 10 years ago 13 Victorian councils set up a company called Community Chef to compete with private food manufacturers to provide meals on wheels and hospital meals. The plan was backed by none other than the then Victorian health minister Daniel Andrews (now Premier) and the then federal regional development and local government minister Anthony Albanese (now federal Opposition Leader).

A state owned business competing with well managed private sector operators will normally get into deep trouble (Australia Post in parcels is a notable exception).

And so the Victorian government had to pour large sums into the Community Chef business to cover the losses. But eventually it became clear that there was no future for Community Chef unless the business had a guaranteed market share.

But for the Victorian government to deliver that monopoly required that there must be no private competitors. Yet Community Chef’s rival I Cook Foods was prospering.

Slugged by fabrications

Then in 2019 the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services – later to be a prominent player in the hotel fiasco – received a report that there might have been traces of listeria in sandwiches provided by I Cook Foods to a hospital.

Later checking discovered that the report was a complete fabrication and there was no listeria in sandwiches provided by I Cook Foods and indeed it’s doubtful that any patient was infected.

But there was no time for checking. The local council sent in an inspector and apparently found a slug in the I Cook Food plant. There is considerable doubt as to how that slug got there – it certainly couldn’t have crawled in.

Suddenly Victorian government public servants who were later to become household names in the COVID-19 pandemic emerged from the shadows.

There was no waiting for proper checking and one official immediately went on radio tearing strips off the company on the basis of what was later shown to false or doubtful evidence. But the bungles didn’t stop there.

The public servants wanted I Cook Foods shut down as soon as possible. But no valid shutdown order can be executed until there is an order from the secretary of the Department Health and Human Services.

Such an order arrived at 8:21 in the evening.

And according to evidence later presented to a parliamentary inquiry into the affair that’s when the shutdown took place.

A small problem: When the plant was shut down the officers took a video of their actions shutting down the plant at a much earlier time and without proper permission. . But strangely it is missing. If that video is discovered it is likely to show that the shut down took place illegally and the cover up will be blown. And remember the shutdown was based on false or at least highly dubious evidence.

Questions be asked

Returning to the main event, the death of 600 people, the group with the power to discover how the Victorian cover up worked is WorkSafe.

It may do its job but, given its connections to the government, there are increasing fears that it will not. We will know on December 29 if has tackled the task.

In the meantime it’s the job of journalists in all media forms and in all news outlets to keep chipping away to get to the truth behind the cover up.

I am glad to say that the ABC is hot on the trail if the missing video in the prelude event.

If the ABC is able to prove that parliament was misled on the I Cook Foods closure and the people involved in that exercise were also involved in the quarantine fiasco then we will have opened an important chip in the 600 deaths cover up.

And there is a second development.

Court damages writs are being issued by interests linked to I Cook Foods against public servants and the department. Those actions may create precedents for action in the loss of 600 people in Australia’s largest industrial accident.

But we must all hope that WorkSafe uses the enormous powers that the community has bestowed on it to do its job.