No senior government figure has even acknowledged they knew in advance that private guards would be hired for Victoria's botched hotel quarantine program.
And no senior government figure has even acknowledged they knew in advance that private guards would be hired for Victoria's botched hotel quarantine program.
Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton and Police Commissioner Shane Patton distanced themselves on Thursday from the hotel quarantine debacle as the state reported 77 new cases of COVID-19 and 310,000 Melbourne residents endured the first day of renewed lockdown.At least five travellers from Victoria's coronavirus hotspots were detected at Sydney Airport, where they face fines of $11,000 or six months' jail under NSW border restrictions, after flying in on Thursday.
Details emerged on Thursday of a bureaucratic snarl involving the departments of Health, Jobs, Premier and Cabinet, Emergency Management Victoria and the Victoria Police, which resulted in the decision to hire the private security firms whose employees are being blamed for carrying the virus from the hotels into the community.
It remains unclear if any Labor government minister or Premier Daniel Andrews knew before the hotels began receiving returned travellers for their mandatory 14-day quarantine that private security would be used to guard the sites. Senior state bureaucrats were given little more than 24 hours to put a plan in place to begin receiving returned travellers after the national cabinet approved the policy on March 27, with flights carrying returnees due at Tullamarine from midnight the following day.
The terms of reference for the inquiry require Justice Coate and her staff to inquire into the actions of the government, its agencies, contractors and hotels.
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