Coronavirus quarantine inquiry: After a debacle like this, heads must roll

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

In the end, there were none. ­Daniel Andrews’ staggering ­admission that no one in his government knows who made the ­decision to deploy private security guards, and, amazingly, there might never have been a decision, is unacceptable.

Heads should roll, and the first casualty should be Health Minister Jenny Mikakos.

Andrews should also think hard about replacing his top ­bureaucrat, Chris Eccles, and Kym Peake, the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, whose mantra of shared accountability now reads like a sick joke. The hotel quarantine program that was supposed to protect the vulnerable, the elderly and Victorians generally, instead, through mismanagement, caused the second wave, resulting in more than 700 deaths and economic carnage.

After all the cheap blame shifting, obfuscation and alleged memory lapses from a string of witnesses about who made the ­decision to deploy guards, it turns out, farcically, that there may not have even been a decision, that it might have happened because there was a “creeping assumption by a group” at the government’s senior levels that guards would be used. In a scripted moment at the end of his evidence, Andrews apologised to Victorians. And so he should given the far-reaching consequences of his government’s colossal blunder.

By his own claimed standards of governance, Andrews would agree that Mikakos should go.

He told the inquiry she was the minister accountable to him and the parliament for the hotel quarantine program during the critical months from early April through to July.

Mikakos and Peake have tried to shift responsibility to Jobs Minister Martin Pakula and his department.

But Andrews has made clear Pakula was only jointly accountable for the program between March 27 and April 8, when the security contracts were signed and before DHHS became the lead agency for the program.

He says Mikakos was accountable for the program through to July when, following the calamitous outbreaks at two hotels, responsibility was moved to Attorney-General Jill Hennessy.

Contrast his position with the evidence of Mikakos on Thursday. She said she did not even know there were security guards at the hotels until two months into the program, which is at least six weeks after the date that Andrews says she is accountable.

The Premier’s position leaves Mikakos exposed, appearing not just stranded in a parallel universe but floating around a bizarro world.

Of course, while they are factional colleagues, taking out Mikakos should not be a difficult decision for Andrews. Pakula could also be vulnerable, given the contracts struck by the department shifted responsibility for infection control to the security companies.

Inside Pakula’s department, in the hours and days leading to the securing of the contracts, there was chaos. Officials wrestled with LinkedIn — “How much is premium? Is it useful if I upgrade” — as they worked to contact security companies despite contact information being on an internal government website.

Despite staffers being concerned about security being a cowboy industry, they did not know the government had an approved list of security companies, hiring one not on the list which charged more than the listed firm. The trio subcontracted out work to 14 companies, increasing the risk of an infection outbreak.

But Pakula did not even know his own department was entering into contracts with private firms to provide the security.

Andrews agreed with counsel assisting Rachel Ellyard that the issues of infection control were too important to be left entirely to private contractors given “what was at stake”.

Given his admissions, and the evidence to the inquiry, locked down Melburnians are entitled to feel deeply let down by Andrews and his government.