Coronavirus Australia: Victoria aware of ‘potential access to ADF help’, hotel quarantine inquiry hears

State authorities believed they could manage the hotel quarantine independently, despite access to ADF help, inquiry hears.

Counsel assisting the inquiry Rachel Ellyard. Picture: Supplied

Victoria was aware there was “potential access to ADF help” when establishing the hotel quarantine program, an inquiry has heard.

Remarking the decision to use private security remained “vexed”, counsel assisting Rachel Ellyard noted evidence presented to the inquiry over the last week indicated state authorities believed they could manage the program independently.

“The evidence seems to be that the Victorian authorities understood that there was the potential access to ADF help … but they considered that they had enough resources for the various enforcement power powers that could be used in a hotel quarantine program,” she said.

On Thursday, a text message from former Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton said using private security “was a deal set up” by the Department of Premier and Cabinet.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews last month told a public accounts and estimates committee hearing that it was “fundamentally incorrect to assert that there was hundreds of ADF staff on offer and somehow someone said no”.

The Premier along with Health Minister Jenny Mikakos and Police Minister Lisa Neville is scheduled to front the hotel quarantine inquiry next week.

On Friday, Ms Ellyard said it was open to former judge Jennifer Coate, who is overseeing the inquiry, to find that known infection control issues at the Rydges contributed to the outbreak, noting that cleaning of the hotel was delayed and that workers exposed to the virus were not told to isolate for seven days.

“Infection prevention and control were inadequate, even on what was known at that time about the virus,” she said.

“It‘s open to the Board to find that in addition to factors that … there were additional factors that increased the risk of spread of transmission from workers at Rydges to the community,” she said.

Nearly 99 per cent of Victoria’s second wave coronavirus cases can be linked to infection control breaches at two hotels, the Rydges on Swanston and the Stamford Plaza, that quarantined returned travellers.

Ms Ellyard said it was clear no one identified as being in charge of hotel quarantine had accepted responsibility for the failures of the program.

“So in the light of all of that evidence, it will be open to the board to find that Operation Soteria was a complex inter-agency operation,” she said.

“Whether it‘s appropriate to say that responsibility was shared or whether it should be described as being diffuse, it’s clear that no one has been identified as or has accepted for themselves that they were in charge.”

The inquiry continues.