Nearly $200 million. Over 18,000 infections. 768 deaths, usually lonely, miserable deaths away from loved ones. That’s the cost of the failure of Victoria’s hotel quarantine program.
But Premier Daniel Andrews has paid no cost whatsoever, despite his responsibility for its failings. The Coate report makes clear that the tragic mistakes in the program have involved no adequate accountability despite the gruesome toll.
“Such a finding is likely to shock the public,” Coate concludes. But if that were so, Andrews would no longer be premier.
On March 15, the Andrews government, as part of the national cabinet process, agreed that self-isolation would be required for returning travellers, because “the majority of cases in the community, at that time, were linked to the virus coming in via international arrivals”.
On March 27, a mandatory hotel quarantine program was announced by national cabinet, with a commencement 36 hours later. But no work had been done by the Andrews government to prepare for the program, even after March 15. It had to establish the program from scratch in 36 hours.
The Department of Jobs, Precincts and Regions was given the task of establishing the program, despite a complete lack of relevant experience in establishing a quarantine program and the services required to run it. At the same time, the Department of Health “was in charge as the control agency of the operation”, but insisted Jobs, Precincts and Regions was also in charge.
The confusion about who was running the program became the dominant feature of it.
As for the decision to use private security guards, that was a decision made by a variety of officials by osmosis, with literally no consideration given to the range of options available. The only person to express a firm view was the then police commissioner Graham Ashton, who believed that adequately trained private security could guard quarantine hotels, with his police force providing “back-up”.
That view seemed to be accepted by every other bureaucratic participant in the incessant meetings involved in established the program. But no decision was ever made, and no assessment was ever made.
The inquiry received more than 70,000 documents in response, including cabinet documents. No document was produced to the inquiry that definitively revealed who made the decision to engage private security or how the initial decision-making process occurred. Likewise, no document produced to the inquiry revealed that there was any consideration given to the ongoing expenditure associated with private security, the appropriateness of that expenditure or whether an alternative enforcement model should have been adopted…
This itself bespeaks of a failure of governance. This decision was a substantial part of an important public health initiative and it cost the Victorian community many millions of dollars. But it remained, as multiple submissions to the inquiry noted, an orphan, with no person or department claiming responsibility.
In the course of the inquiry, Chris Eccles, the head of the Premier’s Department, and health minister Jenny Mikakos, both resigned. But the failure of the Andrews government to do any preparatory work in relation to quarantining overseas travellers, Andrews’ agreement to the national cabinet deadline for the establishment of the quarantine program, and his failure to clarify who was in charge of that program and thus who was responsible for key — and fatal — decisions like the one to use private security guards, ended up costing 768 lives.
There’s been a tendency — one we at Crikey have been guilty of — to suggest that the Victorian tragedy reflects some reflexive disposition to outsourcing within government regardless of whether it’s appropriate. But the Coate report doesn’t show that. If Ashton has professed a preference for police undertaking the quarantine duties, it seems that would have been absorbed as the de facto decision as well.
The report shows decisions being made without any clear leadership, by officials from different departments and with different agendas, with suggestions, comments and arse-covering substituting for actual decisions with clear accountability.
Sometimes bureaucrats are empire-builders. But sometimes, too, they sense risk and avoid it like — well, you know what. The whole process around the private security issues smacks of officials making sure they didn’t place themselves at risk of failure in a crucial program.
The lack of leadership — the lack of someone demonstrably and accountably in charge — goes all the way to the top. Andrews wasn’t in charge, despite his title. Nor — fatally — did he ensure someone else was.
For all his rhetoric about being responsible, Daniel Andrews hasn’t been accountable. He threw Mikakos under a bus and watched as Eccles departed. He himself sits there still, continuing to enjoy high approval ratings, confident he can survive everything critics, News Corp and Scott Morrison throws at him — let alone the useless Victorian opposition.
But that won’t change the fact that his leadership failings cost 768 lives.
It seems to be the way of politics in Australia. No one in New South Wales has ever been held accountable for the Ruby Princess disaster and the 28 deaths that caused. Certainly not Gladys Berejiklian, who presides over a sleazy government and turned a blind eye to her boyfriend’s grifting and corruption, and who defends blatant pork-barrelling.
And certainly not Scott Morrison, who ducked all responsibility for the catastrophic regulatory failures that contributed to the deaths of hundreds of Victorians in privately-run nursing homes, insisting it was not his responsibility — and who leads the nation’s most blatantly corrupt government, in which no minister, whether rorter, sleazebag or outright crook, is ever held to account, but instead protected by cover-ups.
None of these scandals have occurred for want of reporting. The media has done its job of exposing rorting and corruption, of revealing systemic failings, of demanding explanations of who was responsible. But the three most senior politicians in the country, who should all be out of parliament in disgrace, remain in charge.
Perhaps, for all that the media obsesses about accountability, and politicians pay lip service to it, voters don’t particularly care?
Responsibility for quarantine was, is and remains into the future the Constitutional responsibility of the Federal Government. Morrison had no plan to implement a quarantine plan; neither did those Ministers who share that responsibility, those of Health, Border Force and Agriculture – but flick passed it to the States so he could say “look over there, not my fault”. Hold those scumbags to account, Bernard. Any mistakes by State Government Premiers, Ministers or officials are at the end the fault of that failure of Morrison and his henchmen.
That responsibility was accepted by all States and Territories at National cabinet. No take backs now.
Only because the bumbling incompetent Morrison had no plan and would have had many more Ruby Princesses flooding in bring the virus – the States and Territories were forced by lack of Federal leadership to take up the responsibility – but that does not excuse the Federal govt – it is not a question of “no take backs now” it is a statement of fact. The Commonwealth has responsibility and cannot shirk that unless they want to change the Constitution.
The states and territories took up the task because the Commonwealth wouldn’t. Yes, they should have done a better job but in comparison with most of the rest of the world they did a creditable job. The use of private security, in all states apparently, was an obvious weakness and we are unbelievably fortunate that the consequences weren’t worse. For many of our most vulnerable citizens in care homes the consequences were the worst, totally the responsibility of the Commonwealth and without any admission of responsibility from there. Apparently there isn’t much in the way of Commonwealth action to improve aged care protection for the next challenge.
They were given 36 hours to get ready! NSW has had people escape from hotels, airline staff wandering around unaccounted for, repeated published photographs of security staff asleep on the job – just no infections got out.
This was well noted by Justice Jennifer Coate in her report. She was quite scathing!!
Most reports seem to be omitting that part.
Let’s hope that in the New Year Keane learns that his bogey man Labor does not exist.
Even when he writes of the reprehensible & unaccountable Morrison & Berejeklian it is only a side issue to his real purpose.
He might as well write for Murdoch.
Agni has covered it! No more needs be said.
The takeaway throwaway journalistic pool available to write for Murdoch, or any corporate MSM, is shark infestedly fiercely competitive .The ‘vocation’ is a real neo-liberal gig state of affairs these days . Bernard’s comfortable matured years of acquired lifestyle possibly couldn’t keep afloat in the swim with all the surplus apprenticed unpaid internship sorcerers of spin…Although he may be a man of independent substantial means, and can afford the option just to write for the hell or highwater of it…
And, Keane is why I am not renewing my subscription.
I doubt that you are Rob’s boy Crusoe there.
In another era, politicians took responsibility and were accountable for what happened in their portfolio. The present generation of career politicians are keen to take credit and award blame, but take no responsibility whatever.
The lethal fustercluck that was the Victorian Hotel Quarantine program should come as no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention for the last few decades. It is the logical outcome of policy decisions that the Australian public have voted for repeatedly since the 1990’s. It is the price we pay for the dominant, unquestioned hegemony of the neo-liberal economic model.
Painful though it might be for people who hold an affection for Dan Andrews, he rightly deserves the opprobrium heaped on him here by Bernard. However, where I differ is in the scale of comparison and in the attribution of responsibility.
Why are the states variously managing quarantine according to local law and customary practice? Because of the refusal of the federal government to take their constitutional responsibility for this. How is it a government so experienced in locking up refugees, and with such a large budget and infrastructure for this abominable practice, has proven so utterly incompetent when it comes to actually preventing the arrival of a genuine (as opposed to a confected) hazard? How is it the Vic government is handed all the blame for the deaths in the for-profit aged care sector, when this is a federal responsibility? In the food-chain of accountability there is plenty of blame to go round, but unquestionably the largest share should be found at the door of the cancerous concatenation of corruption in Canberra.
By comparing Andrews to Morrison, Bernard actually blesses the latter with faint damnation.
What Griselda said. 100%.
Yes Andrews made mistakes, yes he stood up in front of hostile media and copped the deranged lambastings of Mudracker psychophants.
He stood up and copped it, where was Scum Mo when the elderly were dying on his watch in the Federally funded nursing homes.
I do not recollect him turning up to deflect the heat aka similar to when he was in Byron Hawaii during bush fire crisis.
I saw Gladys on the news re N.S.W answering questions feom her pet media reporters.
Also! how many pandemics we had in the last few decades and yes people made mistakes and yes ppl were accountable, but the brave ones stand up to cwear it, the gutless ones hide behind excuses and just plain hide.
That was then – when adults were in charge.
This is now, when bean counters rule and politicians hide behind commercial-in-confidence, aka commercial incomptence.
Do tell us, Bernard. Aside from ensuring that security contractors were party donors, what would a Liberal Government have done differently?
Not holding my breath, because unlike Rundle you don’t have the balls to show up here and argue your case.
Agree with the comment, but just wish you hadn’t equated courage with possession of a pair of te5ticle5. Doing so assumes that 50% of the population will never be brave.
Indeed!
The Common (very) use of “Balls” to indicate courage and determination is sexist in the extreme – and so very popular!
Says quite a lot about the folk who use it.
Taken on the chin.
Now you are being philopugilistic – it’s a sorry situation when old catchphrases and shorthand (oops, is that sexist..?) can no longer be used for fear of the offence seekers.
Perhaps you could have written ‘guts’ but that would be deliberately misinterpreted as body shaming.
It’s a dumb world and growing dumber by the minute.
In what way does the proven failure of the Victorian Labor government have anything to do with an imaginary and hypothetical Lib government, and what they may or may not have done should they have been in power? I can only infer from this that you think it would have been impossible for any other government to also not stuff up. So in the end all we can glean from your comment is that you are pro Labor. Such enlightenment.
Mmm, I think some of your accountability is misdirected.
The Feds were responsible for age care and consequent fatal failures
Feds are also responsible for quarantine but you would not know it here. The Judge was also critical of the Fed Gov not preparing for quarantine but would not comment further because the Feds contribution was not part of her remit
Brett ‘Whitewash’ Walker SC was not a judge, merely a functionary with extremely circumscribed terms of reference.
Was it Joh who said, “Never hold an Enquiry until you know what the answers will be”?
I think that was Sir Humphrey Appleby. To hold an enquiry when you don’t know the outcome would be very courageous, minister…
Thanks.
Life imitates Art.