Coronavirus: They sacked me for speaking out, says whistleblower doctor Paul Finlay

A doctor says he has been fired by health officials after he ‘blew the whistle’ on Australia’s quarantine policy.

Veteran emergency room doctor Paul Finlay.

A senior doctor who had been treating returned travellers ordered into hotel isolation says he has been fired by health officials after he “blew the whistle” and publicly described Australia’s quarantine policy as a disaster.

Veteran emergency room doctor Paul Finlay had been working at Sydney Airport conducting health checks on returned travellers, including pregnant women, people with dementia and those with severe mental health con­ditions. He said he was sacked by the South Eastern Sydney Local Health District two days after The Australian published his comments criticising the government’s “iron-fisted enforcement” of the hotel quarantine policy on April 5.

“I found out via email that my ‘services were no longer required’ and so I lost my job at the airport,” he said. “I was probably the most senior doctor they had at the airport and I had helped set up most of the screening procedures.”

Dr Finlay had last week said he could no longer “turn a blind eye to the lies being peddled by state and federal bureaucrats” in order to combat the spread of COVID-19.

“The forced isolation to prevent the spread of coronavirus is a disaster,” he said, while inter­action between state and federal governments had been “hostile”.

“I was told every person I had flagged as vulnerable would be given an exemption but I later learned that was a lie … It hadn’t actually been done.”

A South Eastern Sydney Local Health District spokeswoman said Dr Finlay was “engaged as a locum” and his employment had not been terminated as a result of his comments.

“Due to the reduction of arrivals at the airport, the number of medical and nursing shifts have been reduced,” she said.

“Since mid-March, screening figures have reduced significantly from 2000 per day to 400 per day.”

The stoush came as a Perth man became the first person in Australia to be jailed for breaching a self-isolation directive issued under the Emergency Management Act.

Jonathan David was convicted in the Perth Magistrates Court for sneaking out of hotel quarantine to visit his girlfriend and buy food on April 4 and 5.

The 35-year-old had been completing 14 days in quarantine in Perth’s TraveLodge Hotel after returning to Perth from Victoria on March 27. He was spotted outside his room by hotel staff on five ­occasions over four days before police were alerted.

Prosecutors said David was not in his room when officers arrived at 7.30am on a Saturday, before returning 45 minutes later and claiming he had left for a “personal problem”.

He breached his quarantine again 14 hours later, leaving his hotel room about 9pm and wedging a napkin into a fire escape door before returning at 4.20am the next day.

Magistrate Elaine Campione on Wednesday described David as “selfish”, fining him $2000 and sentencing him to six months and two weeks in jail.

“You were more than foolish — your actions were selfish in the ­extreme, your actions were reckless in that you paid no attention to the potential risk you were exposing the community to,” Ms Cam­pione said.

“You chose to roll the dice with other people’s lives and that is breathtakingly arrogant.”