That decision seems to have been made with barely any process being followed by Andrews,his ministers and public servants.
Coate found that using private security in quarantine hotels instead of the police or army should have been decided after carefully weighing the benefits,risks and options available. However,at the fateful meeting on March 27 where it was decided,"there was no evidence that any such considered process occurred … until the outbreaks occurred".
Ironic,then,that the group establishing hotel quarantine,led by the Health Department,named it Operation Soteria after the Greek goddess of safety.
This report is comprehensive in its way – it is certainly highly critical of the government – but not even a $5.7 million inquiry could work out precisely who made the decision to use private security.
"Somewhat ironically,"Coate points out,the pursuit of an answer there"occupied a far greater amount of time and energy during the inquiry than it did"in the March 27 meeting that settled on private guards.
"No person or agency claimed any responsibility for the decision to use private security as the first tier of security. All vigorously disputed the possibility they could have played a part in'the decision'."
Worse,when deciding who should staff quarantine hotels to"guard"21,821 returned travellers,no one even considered the police or army.
"At no time"at the March 27 meeting,Coate found,"did it appear there was any consideration of the respective merits of private security versus police versus Australian Defence Force.
"Instead,an early mention of private security rather than police grew into a settled position."
Coate’s report finds a discussion on which private security firms to use went on in a WhatsApp group between Jobs Department public servants. These officers appeared not to know there was a list of firms they could use that had"publicly available details,including email and mobile numbers,on a website"– a listThe Age found in June using Google.
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The guarding of quarantine hotels was one of the most important jobs Andrews’ government had to decide on in March as the pandemic unfolded.
And yet nobody objected when a highly subcontracted industry with a high proportion of shonks working in it was given the job. Adding insult,his government blithely releaseda report on how broken the private security industry was at the same time that the industry was becoming the vector for the spread of COVID-19 outside quarantine hotels.
Private security firms outsourced their work to subcontractors despite there being"no adequate oversight",Coate found. This largely casualised workforce was then employed"in an environment where staff had a high likelihood of being exposed to the highly infectious COVID-19".
This,Coate found,was inappropriate.
Ideally,"a fully salaried,highly structured workforce with a strong industrial focus on workplace safety,such as Victoria Police,would have been a more appropriate cohort",she wrote.
On Tuesday,Andrews concurred,telling reporters that,if he had his time again,"I would prefer that police had been chosen to do that work".
He won’t get his time again. Neither will the 801 people who died,nor 18,000 more who got coronavirus after it escaped Victoria’s quarantine hotels because of the stark failings of Andrews and his government that this report lays bare.
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