Proposed findings unsurprising but hard to stomach

The hotel quarantine scheme, a program supposedly aimed at keeping Victorians safe from COVID-19, was in fact a “seeding ground” for the disease’s spread

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews in Melbourne on Monday. Picture: Getty Images

When it came, the words were ­unsurprising but still hard to stomach.

The hotel quarantine scheme, a program supposedly aimed at keeping Victorians safe from COVID-19, was in fact a “seeding ground” for the disease’s spread, resulting in the deaths of 768 ­people and 18,418 infections.

This proposed findings by counsel assisting the Coate inquiry was the cut-through ­moment on Monday, as lawyers spent hours laying out a damning picture of the program’s myriad failings.

If retired judge Jennifer Coate embraces their recommen­dations, the future of three department heads, including Daniel Andrews’s top bureaucrat Chris Eccles and Health Department secretary Kym Peake, must be in doubt for failing to properly brief their ministers.

The recommended findings were notable for not directly criticising any Andrews government minister, including Jenny Mikakos, who quit as health minister.

As to the notorious question of who decided to deploy private sec­urity guards, counsel assisting Rachel Ellyard said “astonishingly” the use of private security was not really a decision but a conclusion arrived at by a “creeping assumption”.

She made it clear that Victoria Police’s preference that private security — and not the cops — be the first line of enforcement was a substantial contributing factor.

Jennifer Coate. Picture: Getty Images

No accountability has been accepted by ministers, secretaries or any officials for the decision.

On the use of the Australian Defence Force, she said Eccles should have told Andrews about the federal offer of ADF personnel. Significantly, given how much time Andrews’s opponents have spent linking the disaster to his ­refusal to use ADF personnel, counsel assisting said it was not open for the inquiry to find the ADF should have been engaged, and no criticism should be made of the operational decision not to use them.

That’s about as good as it got for the Andrews government.

Despite all the ducking and weaving by the Department of Health and Human Services officials and their pleas of shared accountability, counsel assisting said Coate should find the DHHS was the control agency responsible for hotel quarantine.

That did not mean the Department of Jobs, Precincts and Regions escaped criticism, with the counsel urging Coate to find the government, through the DJPR, divested responsibility for training, infection control and PPE for private security guards to private companies.

Responsibility for managing the risk of infection and providing for the safety of those involved in the quarantine program should have remained with the state.

The proposed findings are highly critical of government bureaucrats and document systemic failings, but the absence of proposed adverse findings against ministers will not satisfy many Victorians, given the deadly and devastating consequences of the government’s collective ineptitude.