How did WorkSafe Victoria and the Office of Public Prosecutions get such a high-profile case so wrong?
It was five months ago, in the middle of an otherwise unremarkable administrative hearing before the Victorian County Court, that a barrister representing the Health Department lit a fuse that this week blew up the only criminal prosecution against the state’s ill-fated hotel quarantine scheme.
In the months that the second-wave epidemic followed, the virus seeped into aged care centres and public housing towers, infected healthcare and transport workers, forced the closure of schools and businesses andThe OPP insists it did not lightly abandon its prosecution. In the absence of Director of Prosecutions Kerri Judd, who is on extended leave, acting DPP Diana Piekusis, KC, consulted three other lawyers within her office.
Victoria’s Inquiries Act, a law that sets the ground rules for royal commissions and boards of inquiry, offers protection for witnesses called to give evidence. Under the Section 80 provision cited by O’Neill, evidence provided by witnesses to these inquiries cannot be used against them in other proceedings, including criminal prosecutions.chaired by Jennifer Coate into the hotel quarantine program in 2020.
WorkSafe can reasonably argue it had no way of anticipating the extent to which Department of Health employees worked hand-in-glove with their bosses to prepare statements and testimony for the Coate inquiry. In this much, they can count themselves unlucky. In another respect, WorkSafe’s approach towards this investigation – and the failure of the OPP to insist on a more rigorous approach – left this case badly exposed.
WorkSafe declined to explain why it didn’t gather its own statements from the 10 Department of Health witnesses. An OPP spokesperson, when asked the same question, said the OPP had no further comment to make.Advertisement
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