Tight-lipped politicians and bureaucrats destroy faith in public office

Premier Daniel Andrews, when a problem dissolves into “not aware”, “did not know” and “can’t remember”, and you can’t find an answer that explains everything, the problem is you (“He said, she said: now it’s ministers in the dark on who made quarantine choices”, 23/9). Denial, and a galaxy of six-figure salaried bureaucrats who should know, destroys credibility and fragments unity. Then cynicism explodes as the public and businesses have to pay, financially and personally, for the self-generated mutually assured destruction caused by leaders, secretaries, chief officers and commissioners. Any setting devoid of honesty and humility yields only one conclusion — it should never have happened.

George Shirling, Mosman, NSW

Public servants and politicians facing the inquiry in Melbourne are all claiming the big challenge was to get quarantine security set up in a very short time. Finding firms that had the staff, and could do the job immediately, was the big challenge. So why did they decline to use the ADF — a force highly trained in the containment of people, ready to go with sufficient numbers and free of cost to the state of Victoria? Instead, Victoria chose to use untrained staff grabbed off the street. The public don’t yet know who made this idiotic decision and apparently no one involved knows either. A lot of people died as a result and the inquiry must not let this get swept under the carpet.

Peter Pitt, Potts Point, NSW

If this weren’t so serious and didn’t have such a catastrophic impact on virtually every Australian, the performances of senior public servants and ministers in the Victorian government appearing at the hotel quarantine inquiry would have been nothing short of hilarious. I’m sure that most informed observers would find it staggering that no one knows who decided to engage private security firms as well as the denial that Victoria was ever offered the assistance of the ADF.

While Dan Andrews and his cronies may be able to pull the wool over the eyes of some Victorians, surely it is incumbent upon him to get to the bottom of this, deliver the truth to the public and not obfuscate with his now serial responses that start off, “I don’t believe … ”. For example, “I don’t believe AFP assistance was ever offered.” This is the sort of behaviour we would expect from a regime in a developing country.

Christopher Jay, Hackney, SA

No matter who has given evidence, we are as far as ever away from knowing the answer to the key question — who took the decision to use private security guards. It should not be that hard. Every contract to supply services to a government agency must have at least two signatures — one from the supplier and one representing the commissioning agency.

It should be a simple matter to establish who signed for the government, and which agency they represented, and then follow the internal chain upwards to the ultimate approval. If that person was not a minister then we need to know whether the contract was discussed with the minister before the contract was signed by both parties.

David Williams, Wynn Vale, SA

Victoria’s top public servant, Chris Eccles, gave this explanation for the security fiasco at the quarantine inquiry: “It could be as high or as low as me making a deduction based on the narrative through the VSB (Victorian Secretaries Board) at that point rather than me drawing a conclusion that there will inevitably be a role for private security.”

I can see the entire cast of the BBC comedy Yes Minister rising as one from their seats and giving a standing ovation as Eccles walks up on stage to accept the Sir Humphrey Appleby Award for best gobbledygook response of the coronavirus season.

John Bell, HeidelbergHeights, Vic

Reading and watching the ducking and weaving by ministers and public servants over the hotel quarantine disaster is astonishing to me. Whatever happened to good old-fashioned “minutes” of meetings? Let alone modern concepts of governance whereby decision-making is strictly recorded for accountability purposes? Why on earth doesn’t the Victorian government have even the slightest obligation to ensure accurate records are kept? This ineptitude (hotel quarantine management) cannot go unpunished for want of a note.

Megan Rowe, Southport, Qld