Victoria Premier 'doesn't know who hired private security' for quarantine

An outdoor photography exhibition on healthcare workers in Melbourne on Tuesday. The renewed outbreak means Melbourne, the capital of Victoria state, will be under a strict lockdown and curfew until the end of next month. PHOTO: EPA-EFE

Updated

Published

Sep 26, 2020, 05:00 AM

MELBOURNE • The leader of the state at the centre of Australia's coronavirus outbreak said he does not know who in his government made the decision to hire private security firms to monitor quarantine procedures in Melbourne hotels that subsequently failed.

"The decision to engage private security contractors, and many decisions like it, were of an operational nature," Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews said in a statement to the inquiry into his government's hotel quarantine scheme.

"I believed that those directly involved in the design and delivery of the programme would carefully consider infection control protocols as part of their deliberations."

Mr Andrews and his Labor government have been under pressure over security failures at quarantine hotels for returned overseas travellers that led to a resurgence of community transmission in Victoria.

The renewed outbreak means state capital Melbourne will be under a strict lockdown and curfew until the end of next month.

In the statement, submitted before he appeared at the inquiry for questioning yesterday, Mr Andrews said that while he was aware of the federal government's offer to provide Australian Defence Force personnel to help with quarantine measures, "I certainly had no expectation that the ADF would have any extensive involvement at that time" in his state's programme.

Epidemiologist Charles Alpren told the inquiry last month that at least 90 per cent of the state's coronavirus cases since May could be linked to the hotel breaches. Among a litany of problems, the contractors failed to use personal protection equipment, and some guards had sex with quarantined guests, the Herald Sun newspaper reported. According to the report, the virus spread among the guards who car-pooled or shared cigarette lighters. They then unwittingly introduced the virus to their own communities.

Faced with a surge of cases that reached a daily high of 686 on Aug 4, Mr Andrews locked down Melbourne, and then the rest of the state. Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has been particularly scathing of the Premier's handling of the crisis, saying it was "like watching a car crash".