And so it goes, as we always knew it would. A hamstrung inquiry delivers a ham-fisted report. Daniel Andrews promised Victorians the hotel quarantine inquiry would get to the bottom of what had occurred, which he concedes has involved grave mistakes that caused the devastating second wave. Yet here we are, the week of Christmas, and we are all none the wiser.
Crippled from its inception by its diminutive stature — a “board of inquiry” isn’t a royal commission — the inquiry’s restrictive terms of reference were most probably drafted by Chris Eccles, who was publicly shamed into resigning halfway through the process for “forgetting” he had spoken to former police chief commissioner Graham Ashton on that fateful day the decision to use private security was made.
Jennifer Coate describes the decision to use private security as “an orphan, with no person or department claiming responsibility”, while emphasising “the evidence did not identify that any one person decided to engage private security in the program. However, there were clearly people who influenced the position that was found to have been adopted at the SCC meeting on the afternoon of 27 March 2020”.
But Coate’s inquiry couldn’t or wouldn’t uncover who made the decision to use private security instead of the ADF and/or police. The inquiry was thwarted by a criminally uncooperative government that withheld crucial documents and demonstrated shameless “amnesia”. Every senior figure and department was represented by different lawyers 10 paces apart. This was always an exercise in covering the Premier’s backside, not about exposing the truth of a disaster that cost 801 Victorian lives and inflicted incalculable economic destruction.
No one took responsibility. Coate said “it is beyond the remit of this inquiry to engage in an examination of the Westminster system of ministerial and public service lines of accountability and responsibility”.
As I wrote in these pages in September, this is beyond a farce. It is beyond an embarrassment. It is utter and undisguised contempt for Victorians. The report did find there was systemic state government failure resulting in 801 deaths. But Andrews has never had the slightest interest in giving grieving families answers, or devastated business owners the truth about why their life’s work is in smoking ruins.
At Monday’s press conference, the Premier exhumed the political corpse of his one-time friend and political ally, Jenny Mikakos, and drove his bus over it again, as he did with former Health Department secretary Kym Peake.
In her bombshell statement tweeted on Monday night, the former health minister essentially called the Premier of Victoria a liar: “I believe Victorians deserve to know the truth about an event that has so profoundly impacted them. They do not need another masterclass in political deflection from the Premier.”
Mikakos also confirmed our worst suspicions about the Coate inquiry: that it “has failed to answer key questions”. She has called for Andrews’ full unredacted phone records to be made public. She is probably aware Andrews and his chief of staff, Lissie Ratcliff, almost certainly made the decision to use untrained private security instead of the ADF. As she mused, Victorians deserve to know why the ADF and police weren’t used from the outset to manage hotel quarantine. But the fact that no one is accepting responsibility for the greatest public policy failure in our state’s history means everybody must. Starting at the top.
If it were a private business that caused the deaths of 801 people WorkSafe would already be prosecuting management under Victorian occupational health and safety law. WorkSafe has 24 separate investigations under way into the second wave, particularly the hotel quarantine fiasco; this must result in prosecutions of those responsible.
The Premier, who said under oath he has ultimate accountability for the things that happen in his government, simply lied. Accountability in these circumstances means you resign in the face of such failure.
It means you don’t get to keep your big white car and your massive salary. It means you lose your immense privileges because your government, with all your handpicked people in it, got this so horribly wrong.
The salt the Premier is rubbing into the wounds of grieving families by saying he won’t resign because he doesn’t “cut and run” is cruel. And it is wrong. Andrews has failed to accept responsibility.
The public has a right to know what’s gone on here and Mikakos’ stunning intervention on Monday night proves there is a monumental cover-up that only a royal commission can get to the bottom of.