Hello fellow readers. It has been years since my last blog and so I feel I owe you an apology but life gets in the way, priorities change and I felt that my material was getting a little stale. But, good news, with weeks upon weeks in lockdown and a COVID pandemic I have lots of new material. This will have a mainly Australian focus with particular attention on Victoria as this is where I live and happens to be the epicentre of the Australian problem.
Currently, I have a series of posts, or chapters, in the works that will take us through all the issues associated with COVID19 and to do this I’ll start back at the point when Victoria entered “the second wave”. Of course, this means talking about hotel quarantine.
The is currently an investigation going on as to what happened in hotel quarantine and whilst this is happening we aren’t going to know exactly what happened until it is completed. However, we do know a few facts:-
• Most, if not all cases of COVID19 in Victoria can be traced back to hotel quarantine.
• Private security agencies were used to monitor and control hotel quarantine.
• Premier Daniel Andrews rejected offers from Prime Minister Scott Morrison to enlist the Australian Defence Force (ADF) for this task.
It is easy to look back with the benefit of hindsight and apportion blame so, to be fair let’s ask three questions. First, was it a reasonable decision to allow private security to monitor hotel quarantine? Second, why was private security used over other options? Third, would it have made a difference?
So, was it reasonable to use private security? Back in February when the seriousness of the pandemic really started to come to light there was very little, if any, community transmission and almost all cases could be linked back to overseas travellers or the Ruby Princess cruise ship. Knowing this, returning travellers should have been of the highest priority for monitoring and control, so was private security up to the task. We know that the answer was no but was it reasonable to have predicted that back in March?
Private security is important in Australia, they provide private business the ability to protect and safeguard their interests in a cost effective manner. But in order for it to be cost effective wages are low and the work is often menial. As a result, most of the workers have only a basic level of education. Also, private security has a large number of part time and casual workers and the recruiting process can be extremely informal. This makes accountability hard to trace, so essentially we had a random workforce of poorly educated not providing security, but being asked to be on the coalface of pandemic management. It was never going to end well, the authorities should have known that and I refuse to believe that Daniel Andrews and the Victorian government followed the best medical advice when making this decision. Medical specialists would have thought about pandemic monitoring needed to be handled by professionals.
Secondly, why did we use private security over other options? Before answering that question let’s ask what the other options for hotel quarantine were. There was the ADF, an option that was rejected by the Premier, the police force, as was used in NSW or Corrective Service, as has been employed in Victoria after the issues of private security were bought to light.
There were other options so why did we not use them instead of private security? I don’t know the answer to this, only the Premier does but I can give you some theories. First, cost, private security is a cheap option but a bad one as the cost of lockdown 2.0 is far greater. Second, every other state refused federal assistance (ADF assistance) for hotel quarantine. The Andrew’s government didn’t want to look like the “weak” state that couldn’t handle it by themselves. Third, the trade unions representing the private security workers saw an opportunity to get people back to work in a time when there was a huge surge in unemployment in the sector due to the forced closure of pubs, clubs and sporting venues. They used their leverage in the Labor Party, who currently hold government to make this happen and the state government buckled to their demands.
Last question, would using a different option to private security make a difference. I’ll compare this to an ADF option as this seemed the most likely alternative at the time. First, I have already alluded to private security having low levels of education and training. This is far less than the ADF. The ADF has qualified doctors and nurses on staff who have training in infection control and even pandemic management. There is a need this because if the ADF is deployed to an area where there is an outbreak of disease, they need to know how to manage it.
Second, ADF staff, even at the most basic level of rank are drilled in discipline and following orders. In complete contrast private security does not. Everyone in Victoria has heard the stories of security staff fraternising with the quarantined and disregarding protocol for infection control. Finally, the ADF has clear structures and lines of accountability that have been tried and tested over decades of conflict and chaotic situations. It has been proven to be flexible in adapting to an almost infinite amount of different situations yet doggedly rigid in maintaining the highest standard. Private security on the other hand is completely different. The inquiry is trying to piece together the structure and lines of accountability which still remain a mystery. One thing we know for sure. It didn’t work.
Until next time,
Stay well :)
