Pressure on WorkSafe Victoria to turn blind eye on hotel quarantine

Hotel quarantine inquiry head Jennifer Coate.

Jennifer Coate and others have assembled a clear-cut case that 800 people died as a result of blatant breaches of Victoria’s Occupational Health and Safety Act.

And Victoria’s hotel quarantine death toll makes it rank with the world’s 10 worst industrial accidents during the last century. The world will be watching us.

The group entrusted to enforce the OH&S act, WorkSafe Victoria, is under incredible political pressure to turn a blind eye. And there are now clear signs that it will crumble under that pressure and set precedents that weaken the OH&S rules for all Australians.

After nine months investigation, WorkeSafe last week sent a letter to Self Employed Australia stating: ”At this point, WorkSafe is not in a position to say whether or when prosecution action will be brought as a result of its investigation.

“The matter is complex, involving multiple duty holders across multiple workplaces, including hotel operators, security companies and government entities involved in the program.

“It bears noting that while there is a considerable body of information on the public record arising from the Coate Inquiry, information, documents and other material provided to a board of inquiry is not necessarily admissible in a criminal proceeding, and of course it is incumbent on WorkSafe to satisfy itself, in accordance with its general prosecution guidelines, that any prosecution is based on admissible evidence capable of discharging the criminal burden of proof.”

My comment is simple: Of course it’s correct that the Coate evidence needs to presented be presented to courts differently. But WorkSafe has the resources to within 14 days contact the relevant people who gave evidence to Coate and have them swear that evidence in accordance with WorkSafe and criminal prosecution requirements. This should have been happening over recent months. Instead it appears nothing has been done.

In addition, WorkSafe Victoria has widespread powers to investigate areas that Coate overlooked, including following the money trail as a result of awarding the hotel security contracts. Here, just small amount of the evidence on the table shows apparent OH&S breaches.

Australian Medical Association Victorian president Julian Rait gave a list of apparent OHS breaches including poor (or non-existent) micro-communication of health messages to non-English speaking communities; delays in notifying people of positive infections; lack of investment in planning and responses with general practice and primary health networks; and decision-making silos within the Victorian government that put individuals at risk, such as the decision to furlough all St Basil’s staff without ensuring a plan for care for residents, leaving their basic needs unmet.

Dr Nathan Pinskier tells a similar story. The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) sought out Dr Pinskier, director and co-owner of the Medi 7 group of practices, and clinical adviser for the Australian Digital Health Agency to assist and manage the provision of medical services to the quarantined traveller.

He emailed Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton warning of dangerous practices.

Dr Pinskier said that some COVID-19 tests were being sent to laboratories who only revealed infection if doctors rang up the laboratory. The results were then sent to the hotel by fax. The laboratory has refused to provide the results to the doctors over the phone, which us the normal practice.

At the same time persons were being sent home from quarantine after 14 days, irrespective of their COVID-19 status.

Luke Ashford was a Ranger Team Leader at Parks Victoria and was deployed as an “authorised officer” (AO) in hotel quarantine. Below are the excerpts of his evidence to Coate from the front line of the disaster.

* “On 25 May 2020, I had my first shift with the program at the Pan Pacific Hotel. It was a Monday evening shift from 3pm to 1am. I recall it was very busy with a large number of detained guests. At this time, I still did not know what my “authorised officer” (AO) role would involve. I had no clue what I would be doing.”

Luke Ashford gives evidence to the hotel quarantine inquiry.

* “I had not been issued with my AO identification, and should not have been allowed into the hotel, I walked straight into the Pan Pacific hotel. No one stopped or challenged me. I wandered around for about 15 minutes. I did not know where I was supposed to be. There was no-one in an official capacity to instruct me on where to go or how the program works.”

* “I received a 10-minute shift ‘hand over’ from a female AO who was originally from New Zealand. I was provided with a department AO quarantine procedure document that was a draft. This document had been printed and left at the AO desk. I still didn’t know what I was meant to be doing.”

* “When I asked the woman about the circumstances of the request, I believe she lied to me. I had doubts about her leave request, so I asked the department AO team leader to ask Victoria Police to do a spot check to ensure she was at the designated location and was following the conditions of the temporary leave permit. My concerns were just dismissed. I was told by the department team leader that Victoria Police would not want to deal with it.”

* “In the ordinary course, if a serious OH&S incident occurs within my usual workplace (Parks Victoria) , there would be an alert put out straight away. This did not occur during the program. Following the Stamford Plaza outbreak, there was no alert, no new instructions or guidance and no lessons learned. Each outbreak was treated like a secret and nothing seemed to change in terms of the program’s operation, practice and procedure. I only knew about the Stamford Plaza outbreak because of what occurred with my colleague. In my opinion, the risks were not taken seriously enough by those running the program”.

The evidence is there. It’s over to WorkSafe to do their job.