WorkSafe charges Victorian government over alleged hotel quarantine breaches

The Victorian government has been charged over a litany of alleged hotel quarantine breaches in a bombshell development.

Victoria’s workplace safety watchdog has taken the extraordinary step of charging the state government with 58 breaches over its hotel quarantine fiasco last year.

The Department of Health faces fines of up to $1.64 million.

In a bombshell development on Wednesday afternoon, WorkSafe Victoria charged the department with 17 counts of failing to provide a workplace that was free of health risks to employees.

It was also charged with a further 41 breaches.

The charges related to the state government’s bungled hotel quarantine program, set up between March and July 2020.

Victoria’s workplace safety watchdog has charged the state government with 17 alleged breaches over last year’s botched hotel quarantine program. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Ian Currie

The Department of Health was responsible for the oversight and co-ordination of the program.

WorkSafe alleged the Department breached Occupation Health and Safety laws by failing to appoint people with infection prevention and control expertise to be stationed at the hotels.

It also alleged the department failed to provide security guards with face-to-face infection prevention control training by a person with the appropriate expertise prior to them starting work.

Written instructions for the use of PPE were “either failed or initially failed” to be provided to workers, it was also alleged.

WorkSafe also questioned whether the Department failed to update written instructions on the use of face masks at several of the hotels.

“In all charges, WorkSafe alleges that Department of Health employees, Victorian Government Authorised Officers on secondment, or security guards were put at risk of serious illness or death through contracting COVID-19 from an infected returned traveller, another person working in the hotels or from a contaminated surface,” a WorkSafe statement read.

“The decision to prosecute has been made in accordance with WorkSafe‘s General Prosecution Guidelines, which require WorkSafe to consider whether there is sufficient evidence to support a reasonable prospect of conviction and whether bringing a prosecution is in the public interest.

“Inquiries into other entities associated with this investigation including hotels, security firms and other Government departments and agencies have concluded.”

The charges related to the state government’s hotel quarantine program set up between March and July in 2020. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Andrew Henshaw

The maximum penalty for a body corporate for each of the charges was $1.64 million.

The investigation took 15 months to complete and involved the review of tens of thousands of documents and multiple witness interviews.

The matter was listed for a filing hearing at the Magistrates‘ Court on October 22.

A number of other investigations relating to the control of Covid-19 related risks in workplaces remained ongoing.

“As the matter is now before the courts the Department will not be providing comment,” a Department of Health spokesperson said.

Opposition Leader Matthew Guy said it was “absurd” taxpayers could be forced to pay for any potential fines.

“So a government authority (WorkCover) will file charges against a government department (Health) for the faults of government ministers, but the government (taxpayers) will pay the ultimate fines,” he wrote online.

“That’s absurd.”

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews fronted an inquiry into the state’s hotel quarantine program last year.

Coronavirus outbreaks at Melbourne’s Rydges on Swanston and Stamford Plaza Hotel, where returned travellers were being quarantined, led to 99 per cent of Victoria’s second wave of Covid-19 cases and 801 deaths.

The bungled $195 million program sparked an inquiry where retired judge Jennifer Coate said in her final report that no one took ownership for the decision to use private guards instead of better-trained personnel.

She said police would have been a better cohort than private guards.

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Originally published as WorkSafe charges Victorian government over alleged hotel quarantine breaches