Coronavirus: Health Minister Jenny Mikakos says she’s not to blame for quarantine debacle

Victorian Health Minister Jenny Mikakos appears before the hotel quarantine inquiry on Thursday.

Jenny Mikakos has joined a conga line of ministers, bureaucrats and officials claiming not to know who decided to deploy private ­security guards to Victoria’s quarantine hotels.

Her stated ignorance was ­depressingly predictable. More startling was her admission that guards had been working at the hotels for almost two months ­before she even found out in late May, and only then because there was an outbreak at Rydges Hotel.

Given her own department had been the lead agency for the scheme since late March, her evidence might strike many as damning. Not the Health Minister.

In a brazen performance, rather than concede any shortcomings, she portrayed herself as an “exasperated” white knight who worked swiftly to fix the scheme’s deficiencies when she finally found out about them.

And she was having nothing of the attempt by Jobs Minister ­Martin Pakula to shift blame to her and her Department of Health and Human Services.

Pakula admitted to the inquiry on Wednesday he did not even know his Department of Jobs, Precincts and Regions had ­entered into the contracts with private firms to provide security.

But Pakula rebuffed the claims by Mikakos and her chief bureaucrat that his department should share responsibility, saying DHHS had been “in charge” since at least March 28.

Mikakos insists she was not part of any of the decision-making that led to the use of private security; that Pakula’s department was responsible for the contracting, and, indeed, she would not support the use of guards in any ­future quarantine program.

It took a series of sharp questions from counsel assisting the inquiry, Ben Ihles, to drive home how the government’s notion of shared responsibility appeared more about no one wanting to have responsibility than actual ministerial accountability.

Mikakos acknowledged “with the benefit of hindsight” that she should have been involved in decisions about the scheme’s structure and lines of accountability, or at the very least consulted. She agreed her department’s involvement in the program was a substantial undertaking and a significant issue that fell within her health portfolio.

Agreeing also she had no idea who made the private security ­decision, she insisted she had “no reason to turn my mind to issues around security guards until we had that first case and the first outbreak at the Rydges Hotel”.

Mikakos gave the impression she was satisfied with her performance; others might bristle at what they might regard as her cynical audacity. But anyone following this inquiry would not be surprised.

Daniel Andrews is due to give evidence on Friday. He will be the final and most important witness. After observing all the blame-shifting, memory lapses and witnesses getting protection from lawyers, Victorians might not expect all the answers from Andrews, but they are entitled to get them.