Coronavirus: Hey hun, add me on Snapchat: security guard

A hotel quarantine security guard slid a note under the door of an ­isolating woman saying ‘Hey hun, add me on Snapchat’ in a major breach of quarantine regulations.

The Crowne Plaza hotel in Melbourne. Picture: Wayne Taylor

A hotel quarantine security guard slid a note under the door of an ­isolating woman saying “Hey hun, add me on Snapchat’’ in a major breach of quarantine regulations that saw the man removed from the hotel, according to emails released by inquiry.

A woman completing the mandatory 14-day quarantine ­period at the Crowne Plaza received the “inappropriate note” before looking up the author on Facebook.

“The note said something like ‘Hey hun, add me on Snapchat’ — she looked up his name on Facebook and it’s a security guard and (she) wants to complain,” the email released on Thursday said.

“He took her outside a few days ago for outside time … with two other guests … two other security guards.”

A reply to the email from Department of Jobs, Precincts and Regions employee Paul Xerri said: “I will contact Wilson Security now to have this guard removed.”

On Thursday, Gonul Serbest, chief executive of DJPR agency Global Victoria, confirmed the ­security guard did not work ­another shift after the incident.

A Wilson Security spokes­woman said: “We took a zero-tolerance approach to any performance concerns, and guards who failed to meet Wilson’s standards were stood down and ­removed from site.”

The probe into the scheme responsible for Victoria’s corona­virus second wave that has claimed more than 460 lives further heard a state government bureaucrat justified hiring Unified Security on the basis that it was owned by Aboriginal Australians.

Emails show in the rush to hire guards for the hotels, Unified was engaged despite not being on the government’s panel of approved providers.

Two companies were emailed at 11.30pm on a Friday, with Unified beating the competition because it responded first at 7am the next day.

In a March 31 email, bureaucrat Trevor Esch warned that having “a non-approved firm providing sec­urity and effectively enforcing government regulation at quarantine sites off the back of some emails and phone calls presents significant risk to individuals involved and the department/­government that is not easily mitigated”.

Katrina Currie, the executive director of employment at Victoria’s DJPR, said she was not aware the panel of providers existed when she engaged Unified.

“Unified is an Aboriginal-owned and controlled organisation and has worked with DJ PR [sic] on related social procurement initiatives,” she wrote in an email.

“They are accredited with Kinaway and Supply Nation. While they are not a panel provider for security services, using their ser­vices is absolutely in keeping with the concept.”

Under cross-examination on Thursday, Ms Currie said she had a “secondary consideration” in hiring Unified to create jobs for the long-term unemployed under the Working for Victoria program.

VTHC secretary Luke Hilakari told The Australian the government asked Trades Hall its view of Unified. “They asked if we knew the company and we said we don’t know them. They don’t have an EBA,” he said.

When asked why Trades Hall “needed to be comfortable” with Unified, Ms Currie told the inquiry: Trades Hall was a partner in ‘Working for Victoria’ so we were liaising with Trades Hall generally so make sure they were aware of the work that we were doing with private businesses across the board.”

Claire Febey, executive director of the Priority Projects Unit at DJPR, said directing the security guards was the responsibility of DHHS who ran the hotel quarantine program.

She said DHHS directed non-medical staff to rely on social distancing to ensure infection control to preserve reserves of PPE.

“Non-medical staff as much as possible should use social distancing as a principal by which they managed infection control and PPE should only be used in circumstances where those other measures weren’t possible.”

The chaos of the early days of hotel quarantine has been captured in messages sent on messaging platform Slack by DJPR employees, which were released by the inquiry on Thursday.

One message said: “No mental health support at airport or hotel”, “lots of newborns need more nappies”, “people with claustrophobia” and “hotel people under resourced; need to slow down buses”.