Commonwealth of Australia July to December 2020

Abstract

Australia endured the so-called “second wave” of COVID-19 in the latter half of 2020, but nationally experienced significantly different impacts and policy responses. Victoria by far suffered the worst outbreak of the virus, recording the highest incidence of infection of any jurisdiction, including the number of deaths. Australia reported 909 fatalities by the end of 2020 from 28,408 infectious cases with over 600 people dying in Victoria alone, with 54 deaths in New South Wales (NSW) and 13 deaths in Tasmania compared to just a handful across the other states. Worldwide an estimate of almost 1.8 million deaths was claimed by year's end. The Victorian outbreak was predominantly put down to lax quarantining in city hotels, blamed on out-sourcing “blunders” with untrained guards asleep, gone missing, or procuring substances like drugs and alcohol for their hotel inmates. The Australian Defence Force offered to provide troops to assist the state's quarantine surveillance exercise, which was initially welcomed by the Andrews government, but then suddenly and inexplicably refused. At a subsequent public inquiry into the failures of hotel quarantining in Victoria (July–December) not one senior government official admitted to taking the decision to use private security firms (although it was likely to have been senior members of the premier's staff as phone records later indicated), and conveniently no-one could remember conversations about the decision despite emails and phone records subsequently emerging to indicate the contrary. The national media dubbed this crisis for the Victorian public service chiefs as “don't know, don't ask, don't care” (The Australian, 23 September 2020: 1). The scandal brought down a number of senior public servants including Chris Eccles, Victorian Department of Premier and Cabinet Secretary, and other departmental secretaries, but scathingly, the ministers did not accept responsibility nor were apportioned actual blame (shades of the Pink Batts Royal Commission after the Global Financial Crisis!). Only one minister was belatedly forced to resign months later, the Health Minister Jenny Mikakos, who was furious that the Premier had said unilaterally that she was responsible for hotel quarantine.