Coronavirus: Victoria Police baulks at hotel quarantine ruling

Victoria Police has urged the hotel quarantine inquiry to find a decision was made to engage private security guards.

Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Shane Patton. Picture: Paul Jeffers

Victoria Police has urged the hotel quarantine inquiry to find a decision was made to engage private security guards, calling on Jennifer Coate to reject proposed findings by counsel assisting the inquiry.

In final submissions released on Monday in the wake of ­additional material to the inquiry, counsel assisting said there was no clear decision to engage private security guards in Victoria’s botched hotel quarantine scheme, but a “starting assumption” they would be used.

On the question of who made the decision to engage private ­security, counsel assisting maintained its earlier submission there was “no clear decision or decision-maker”.

“However, the use of private security in some capacity can now be viewed as having been a starting assumption on the part of those who had a role in the dissemination of information about what became the hotel quarantine program and those who had a role in its planning,” it said.

But Victoria Police submitted the findings should not be made, and that new evidence supported the propositions that a decision was made before a State Control Centre meeting at 4.30pm on March 27, or there was a settled consensus in favour of private security prior to that meeting.

It said evidence pointed to the Department of Premier and Cabinet “as the source of (at least) knowledge of the private security decision”.

Counsel assisting also invited Ms Coate to accept the assurance of Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton that he did not become aware of the use of private security until May. Professor Sutton gave evidence on September 16 that he was not aware of the use of private security until after the outbreak at Rydges in late May.

Documents provided to the board after the close of the public hearings included an email chain which copied Professor Sutton into an email from Braedan Hogan, dated March 27, advising a commonwealth official that private security had been contracted for use in the hotel quarantine program.

Affidavits from Mr Hogan and Jason Helps both drew attention to documents which could have informed Professor Sutton about the use of private security in the hotel quarantine program prior to the date he asserts.

Counsel assisting said neither had direct knowledge of the fact of when Professor Sutton was first aware of the use of private ­security. Professor Sutton accepted that he received the March 27 email from Mr Hogan but that the content regarding the use of private security did not register with him.

He reaffirmed his previous oral and written evidence that he was first aware of the use of private security in late May.

“Having regard to all the evidence on this issue, we do not invite the board to find to the contrary,” counsel assisting said.