Editorial: The Ruby Princess has become a grim symbol of the pandemic, but the earlier plight of its sister vessel - the Diamond Princess - should have set off alarm bells
Sailing out of the Sydney Heads just before sunset one afternoon in early March, the 2700 passengers and 1000-odd crew aboard the Ruby Princess could not have imagined that by early April, their otherwise routine cruise to New Zealand would become the focus of a criminal investigation amid a public health emergency.
NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller says the criminal investigation's main focus will be on whether the operators of the Ruby Princess breached biosecurity laws in failing to alert local authorities as to the extent of sickness on board. They are not the only ones in the line of fire. The heat is also on state and federal agencies that gave the green light for passengers to disembark the ship. Once on shore, those passengers caught trains, buses and even overseas flights to get home.
Alarm bells should have been ringing around the world on the potential catastrophe that every cruise liner posed, but particularly one that had admitted to having a number of passengers onboard with flu-like symptoms. This is not a matter of hindsight. The experience in Japan, where the Australian government had to eventually charter a Qantas flight to rescue more than 200 Australians onboard, gave officials first-hand experience of what can go wrong.
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