Tower residents’ rights trampled

Victoria, under Premier Daniel Andrews, purports to take inclusiveness so seriously that its public service has been directed to phase out “gendered” terms such as husband and wife as well as Mr, Mrs, Miss and Ms. Supposed concern for human rights, however, was cast aside when the Andrews government detained 3000 residents of nine public housing towers in the inner Melbourne suburbs of Flemington and North Melbourne in early July, shortly before the state’s second wave of coronavirus. Mr Andrews gave residents no advance warning before he announced the lockdown on Saturday afternoon, July 4. Confused residents, many of whom did not speak English, were caught off guard without food, medications and other essentials. They were confined to their small units and denied fresh air, sunshine and exercise for days.

Victorian Ombudsman Deborah Glass has called on the government to apologise to them — for good reason. In a report tabled in parliament on Thursday, Ms Glass said: “The rushed lockdown was not compatible with the residents’ human rights, including their right to humane treatment when deprived of liberty. In my opinion, based on the evidence gathered by the investigation, the action appeared to be contrary to the law.” As we editorialised on Monday, July 6: “Apart from Wuhan early on, few other places in the world have forced such a drastic denial of liberties … On Sunday afternoon, 18 hours after it began, residents such as a father of five young children complained the family had not been doorknocked and were worried about what they were going to eat.” Giving residents even half a day to shop and explaining in their own languages what was happening would have made a real difference. Time would determine the effectiveness of the lockdown and its impact on the mental health of those confined without access to fresh air and sun, we said.

Ms Glass found the lockdown was effective and necessary. Its implementation, however, was rushed and incompetent, and caused unnecessary confusion and distress. Telephone notifications, for example, did not start until the third day and almost half of all households at one tower, at 33 Alfred Street, North Melbourne, had not been contacted by July 10. Delays in translation and distribution meant written explanations were not provided until the fifth and sixth days, when directions were about to be revoked. The lockdown was lifted at eight of the towers after five days, but residents at 33 Alfred Street, where infection rates were highest, were detained for another nine days.

Most of the residents affected, the report says, found out about it when they saw uniformed police officers surrounding their homes. That was especially problematic. A significant proportion of tower residents, Ms Glass’ report says, came from non-European backgrounds: “Some had endured civil wars and dictatorships before settling in Australia, some even surviving torture at the hands of their former state. For them the overwhelming police presence was particularly traumatic. Their distress, when they spoke to us, was palpable.”

The residents deserve an apology. But none was forthcoming on Thursday. Mr Andrews conveniently held his first press conference of the week a few minutes too early to comment on the report, Rachel Baxendale reports. Victorian Housing Minister Richard Wynne was left to carry the can but he said he would make “no apology” for “saving people’s lives”. The number of known active cases of coronavirus in the nine towers had doubled from 17 to 34 in the three days to July 4, Mr Wynne said, when the decision was made to lock them down.

Ms Glass’ investigation found the immediate start of the lockdown appeared traceable to a Crisis Council of Cabinet meeting at 1.45pm on the Saturday. Her request for documents from the cabinet meeting unfortunately was denied. So much for transparency. Victoria’s deputy chief health officer, Annaliese van Diemen, who was acting chief health officer on the day of the lockdown, was given just 15 minutes’ notice before the July 4 media conference to consider and sign directions for the lockdown, including the potential human rights impacts. The immediacy of the lockdown was not on her advice, the report says. Dr van Diemen told the Ombudsman’s investigation that she did not believe ­delaying the lockdown by a day “would’ve made a hugely significant difference to the longer-term epidemiology” of the coronavirus outbreak in the towers. The decision, then, was political rather than medical. And it made a mockery of the Andrews government’s woke agenda.