Who Daniel Andrews spoke to on quarantine D-Day

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Crosling

A frantic Daniel Andrews spoke for more than six minutes with Scott Morrison and tried to reach Gladys Berejiklian by phone on the crucial day that the Victorian Premier stitched together the hotel quarantine arrangements that triggered Australia’s deadly 2020 coronavirus wave.

Confidential phone details seen by The Weekend Australian show for the first time the people the Victorian Premier rang on March 27 last year in an 11-hour period when the Victorian government was desperately trying to set up a system to keep ­returned overseas travellers in hotels to prevent the virus’s spread.

The phone records were furnished confidentially to the Victoria hotel quarantine inquiry but unlike some text messages were not released. They show that on the day, Mr Andrews spoke to the Prime Minister, tried to contact the NSW Premier and contacted Victorian chief health officer Brett Sutton in the evening.

They show a nearly six-hour gap on the historic day where Mr Andrews did not use his phone and the discussions that did occur were tightly held with his inner sanctum.

They included an attempt to reach his wife, Cath, but he appears only to have left a message.

The call logs show that Mr ­Andrews also contacted Police Minister Lisa Neville and that he had two conversations with his chief of staff, Lissie Ratcliff, who exchanged several texts with the Premier earlier in the day.

The pair discussed via text the potential help from Lindsay Fox’s Linfox on hotel quarantine logistics and the supply of food from LaManna supermarket, which is near Essendon Airport.

The call logs show that no ­direct calls were made by Mr ­Andrews to other ministers, ­security companies or people connected with providing security.

Telecommunications records provided to the inquiry by former police chief Graham Ashton led to Mr Andrews’ most senior ­bureaucrat resigning.

A government spokesman said: “These matters involve the legal discovery process behind the Board of Inquiry the government ordered into the issue of hotel quarantine, which heard evidence for months and delivered its findings last year.”

The inquiry was provided with the call logs but they were not made public at the time.

The absence of the phone records, which do not include incoming calls, heightened speculation about who knew what and when about the way the quarantine system was set up.

The decision to employ private security guards could not be traced by the inquiry to any minister or bureaucrat, with retired judge Jennifer Coate finding the decision to use private security guards, without adequate training in infection control was an “orphan” of which no one in cabinet took ownership.

The Prime Minister did not ­respond for comment.

The text messages show that at 6.38am on March 27 Mr ­Andrews was discussing the number of flights due to arrive in Melbourne and bed capacity.

Mr Andrews was briefed on guidelines for leaving rooms, worker protection, transport and the number of expected hotel quarantine participants.

There was no record of Mr Andrews dialling his then chief bureaucrat Chris Eccles, who resigned after the hotel quarantine report was released. Mr Eccles ­resigned after a review of his phone records showed he spoke to the police commissioner on the afternoon the decision was made to use security guards in quarantine hotels.

He had previously told the ­inquiry that he did not recall speaking to Mr Ashton.

Ms Coate found the hotel quarantine plan was rushed. “As a consequence of there being no plan for the large-scale detention of international arrivals into a mandatory quarantine program when the national cabinet decision was announced, those who would have to implement the program in Victoria had to do so without warning and without any available blueprint for what was required,’’ she said.