Coronavirus Australia: How the judicial inquiry into bungled hotel quarantine will likely unfold and what Labor fears

As the case numbers and death toll rise, so does the political pressure on Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews. Picture: Darrian Traynor/Getty Images)

The judicial inquiry into hotel quarantine is Victorian Labor’s biggest political landmine since 2014.

In the midst of a pandemic no-one wants to be talking politics but the government started this conversation.

The inquiry can be boiled down to the following key points.

Who knew about the problems with the system, what was reported to authorities and who failed to act?

And to what extent has the debacle fed through to the soaring number of cases that have crippled Melbourne, probably led to deaths and has neutered the national economic recovery.

It’s no surprise Labor is petrified about the evidence and the findings.

If the inquiry is to do its job, then it will answer these questions, hold to account those who have erred and provide a framework for which the rest of the country can use to move forward.

Daniel Andrews could have released quarantine data himself, but has delayed the political outcome. Picture: David Geraghty/NCA NewsWire

Tony Neal QC, the counsel assisting, will need to go at warp speed to get through this all and, really, has been given way too little time to do his job.

This is no doubt deliberate. The inquiry reports on September 25.

However, it was clear from Neal’s outline that all relevant parties will likely be canvassed and called on to help with the investigation.

It is also clear that Neal will have the medical evidence to show to what extent the virus has spread on the back of the security guard arrangements, underpinning the futility of Daniel Andrews’s political strategy to conceal the data.

It is odds-on that within weeks we will have the scientific evidence that will enable us to determine just how much quarantine is to blame for the Victorian crisis.

It is unlikely to be kind to Andrews.

The Victorian Premier could already have released that information himself had he wanted to but now all he has done is delay the political pain.

The 275 new cases in Victoria on Monday do nothing to calm the community’s fears, indeed it just underpins the challenges.

Neal outlined how 10 government departments or agencies were involved in the delivery of the system and even more private sector companies.

It’s interesting that the government contracted a total of eight different security companies to oversee the operation, underpinning just how thin the industry must have been stretched to provide the necessary staff to keep the overseas travellers under control (sic).

It’s obvious that, in many cases, the travellers weren’t contained and the system failed, potentially catastrophically.

Andrews is not without his support in Victoria during the pandemic but it’s time the rabid sections of his support base cool their jets.

It’s quite possible to fight the virus but hold governments to account at the same time.

We know there were major errors in the way hotel quarantine was conducted in Victoria.

Democracy cannot stop just because there is a pandemic under way.

Even if the answers will inevitably lead to significant embarrassment to the Andrews government.