Hotel quarantine inquiry hears Daniel Andrews’ government ‘responsible for deaths of 768 people’ - NEWS.com.au

Victoria’s bungled hotel quarantine scheme is responsible for the deaths of 768 people and 18,000 infections an inquiry has been told.

In closing submissions to the inquiry, counsel assisting the inquiry Ben Ihle said the failure to properly train security guards, inadequate testing of detainees and poor infection control measures meant that the program became “a feeding ground for the spread of COVID-19 into the community”.

He argued the inquiry could “comfortably find that the hotel quarantine program in Victoria failed to achieve its primary objective” which was to stop the spread of COVID-19.

“The failure by the hotel quarantine program to contain this virus is today responsible for the deaths of 768 people, and the infection of some 18,490,” Mr Ihle said.

“One only needs to pause and reflect on those figures to appreciate the full scope of devastation and despair occasioned as a result of the outbreak.”

The inquiry was told the failure to monitor the scheme and train private security guards on infection control allowed the virus to escape the “hot hotels.”

“The program should have been accompanied by intensive and ongoing monitoring and auditing..the Victorian Government failed to ensure this was done.”

As a result, the contagious virus spread rapidly among security guards and hotel staff who unwittingly carried the virus into their homes and suburbs across Melbourne.

“This was a health emergency,’’ Mr Ihle said.

Disturbingly, the inquiry was told the spread of the virus was likely to have spread at the Rydges Hotel, which was responsible for 90 per cent of the outbreak was most likely via environmental transmission such as surfaces rather than person to person contact.

The inquiry has previously heard that three different travelling groups returning to Australia in May and June were the original source for the majority of Australia’s second wave cases.

The family was sent to the “hot” hotel in Carlton for COVID patients in mid May after they tested positive. About 90 per cent of the 18,000 infections can be traced back to the family of four who quarantined at the Rydges hotel.

By May 18 the family tested positive and by mid June 17 workers from the hotel and close contacts had tested positive.

The inquiry was told the family was allowed to “walk outside their room, during which time they were accompanied by security guards.”

After the national cabinet and the Prime Minister Scott Morrison decided to introduce a system of mandatory quarantine on Friday, March 27, the states had less than 48 hours to get the scheme up and running.

Earlier, Counsel assisting the inquiry, Tony Neal QC said there was “simply not the time to undertake the ordinary activities of translating a policy into a plan and then realising that plan.”

“An enormous immediate unenviable burden was placed on those in public service to establish not one but two settings of infection control facilities in buildings clearly not designed for quarantine purposes,” he said.

The inquiry was also told Victoria Police did not want to run the state’s hotel quarantine scheme and “their preference became the outcome” that resulted in the disastrous decision to use poorly trained security guards an inquiry has been told.

In closing submissions to the inquiry today, counsel assisting the inquiry Rachel Ellyard offered a damning recap of the evidence and the failure by anyone to take responsibility for the decision.

But she said it was clear that the reluctance of the VicPol to take the job on was a major “contributing factor” to a creeping assumption that private security would do the job.

“The expression of a preference can readily be understood to have given the clear impression that police weren’t going to do it and there needed to be an alternative,” Ms Ellyard said.

“Their preference became the outcome.

“It wasn’t Victoria Police’s decision, we don’t put it that highly, but Victoria Police’s clear position expressed in that meeting, that private security would be, in its view or its preference, the appropriate first line of enforcement, has to be understood as a substantial contributing factor to that creeping consensus.

Former Victorian Police Commissioner Graham Ashton has previously told the inquiry that while he was “comfortable” with private security being used he did not make the decision or have a preference.

But Ms Ellyard invited the inquiry to find Mr Ashton may have misremembered some moments in the busy day as officials raced to implement the scheme.

“Mr Ashton says, also in his recollection by a text message that he sent, that he understood that private security were going to be used and he seems to have communicated that understanding to Commissioner (Reece) Kershaw of the Australian

Federal Police,’’ she said.

But Mr Ihle said that it was arguable that transmissions could have occured any any hotel quarantine scheme.

However, the failure to properly train security guards increased those risks substantially and should have been the subject of continuous assessment.

More to come

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2020-09-28 05:05:19Z
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