Lying is native to politics. If you did not realise it before watching the inquiry into Victorian Labor’s disastrous COVID-19 quarantine scheme, you will now. The Victorian government led by Daniel Andrews is so mired in lies that truth is a distant memory.
One by one, the Labor team denied responsibility for the hotel quarantine scheme. Yet its poor governance led to a second COVID-19 outbreak that resulted in hundreds dying. If there is one good thing that has come from the public health disaster, it is that the media has united to uncover the truth. Journalists from The Australian, Fairfax, Sky News and The Guardian braved social media mobs to probe what went wrong in Victoria during the crisis. The thankless task has uncovered a series of poor leadership decisions, systemic incompetence and systematic denials of truth by the Andrews government.
The hotel quarantine inquiry led by former judge Jennifer Coate has had only minimal impact thus far. It has been less a revelation of truth than an insight into the character of Victorian Labor and lying as a political art.
We heard the lie by omission, the half-truth, blame-shifting, obfuscation, red herrings, selective memory and collective amnesia. The Premier claims not to know who made the decision to hire private security staff to guard people in hotel quarantine. Labor ministers have followed suit, though most peppered their feigned ignorance with a generous serving of selective amnesia.
Health minister Jenny Mikakos was in the frame from the outset and she was the first to resign. It is a good start. Under oath, Mikakos told the inquiry on Thursday that she did not know until May that private security had been contracted to guard returned travellers. But a video unearthed from a press conference on March 29 showed her standing near minister Martin Pakula as he discussed security arrangements.
On Saturday, Mikakos tendered her resignation and defended her innocence in a statement. She took responsibility for her department, but blamed departmental staff for not briefing her on some matters. She issued strong disagreement with parts of the Premier’s statement to the board of inquiry and wanted to know “who made the fateful decision to use security guards”.
Andrews pointed the finger at the health minister on Friday, saying there was joint accountability between Pakula and Mikakos at the beginning of the hotels program, after which she had primary responsibility for it.
After 25 days of the inquiry featuring 62 witnesses, the question remains of who was responsible for deciding to outsource hotel quarantine security to private companies. On the face of it, the decision would – or should – have needed the agreement of Pakula. As the minister responsible for the Department of Jobs, Precincts and Regions, he led the team that procured the private security companies. Who directed him to do so? You guessed it; nobody knows. Departmental secretary Simon Phemister agreed that emails obtained for the inquiry suggest that the security work would go to companies preferred by Trades Hall. Was the union body involved in the botched scheme?
Pakula says his department had responsibility for the hotel quarantine scheme from March 27-28 before it was handed over to Mikakos’s department. But, according to emails cited in The Age, Pakula’s staff sent an email on March 30 telling the health department that the private security companies were “not adequate” and asking for police support to guard the quarantine hotels. Emergency Management Victoria, the responsibility of minister Lisa Neville, denied the request from Pakula’s department. It appears at least three Labor ministers were involved in early decision-making about the hotel quarantine scheme: Mikakos, Neville and Pakula.
On Friday, Andrews denied knowing who was responsible for the decision to appoint private security firms to oversee hotel quarantine. However, he and his ministers are involved in rejecting help from the Australian Defence Force that could have prevented the problems with hotel quarantine developing into a public health disaster.
On August 8, the Premier told a parliamentary committee: “I think it is fundamentally incorrect to assert that there was (sic) hundreds of ADF staff on offer and somehow someone said no. That’s not, in my judgment, accurate.” However, Sky News and others reported that Prime Minister Scott Morrison personally wrote letters to the Victorian Premier urging him to accept the help of Australian Defence Force personnel in July as the number of COVID cases surged in Victoria. It was reported that the PM sent letters to Andrews on July 4, 6 and 11. In the final correspondence, the PM offered about 1000 defence personnel to work alongside Victoria Police to ensure the virus was contained, affected suburbs were locked down and contact tracing was undertaken.
Andrews seems willing to accept the biggest pay cheque of any state premier, but not the responsibility that comes with it. When Defence Minister Linda Reynolds noted the Victorian government had rejected commonwealth offers of ADF help with hotel quarantine, the Premier framed it as playing politics. He supported the alternative version of events authored by Emergency Management Commissioner Andrew Crisp, who said he neither sought nor was offered ADF assistance with hotel quarantine in meetings on March 27-28. However, Defence records showed that from late March the offer stood. The Victorian government authorities rejected at least half a dozen offers of assistance.
The Guardian reported that in June, as the hotel quarantine disaster was coming to light, Crisp requested 850 Defence personnel to help with compliance on the request of the health department. The request was withdrawn the following day after the Department of Justice and Community Safety told Crisp it was taking control of the operation and considering whether to use police and corrective services.
So, there you have it. No one is responsible for the Victorian government failing to manage the COVID-19 crisis except the Premier, his ministers, their staff and the union-preferred companies that ran hotel quarantine like no one was watching – because no one was.
Don’t worry about perimenopause, says a doctor who’s not gaslighting you
Women are concerned about a decades-long hormonal rollercoaster and doctors are accused of ‘gaslighting’ their patients. Dr Steve Robson tries to make sense of the perimenopause discussion.
Angry Ange digging his own grave
The Australian’s tenure as Spurs has the same stench as his final days as Socceroos manager.