Andrews dodges questions on Vic public servants’ hotel quarantine self-praise

Phil Ritchie|11/08/2020|7min

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has dodged questions about a damning and self-congratulatory video of public service workers praising the state's hotel quarantine in its early days before disaster struck the COVID-19-plagued scheme.

“The fact we’ve been able to help slow the spread of coronavirus makes us feel really proud of the work that we’re doing,” Global Victoria CEO Gonul Serbest said in the video before introducing the agency’s team on the ground.

“It’s been a really interesting and complex project but something that I think we’ll look back and really think about as something that’s been really rewarding,”

The video, played in April, featured public servants detailing their roles and the challenges faced with handling the scheme.

One Global Victoria employee can be heard joking about how the saying “that escalated quickly” had taken on an “entirely different meaning”.

Mr Andrews said he hadn’t watched the video at Tuesday's media conference and wasn’t able to make a judgement about its contents.

But when asked if Global Victoria ran the state’s hotel quarantine he said “no, I can’t confirm that at all”.

Mr Andrews told a parliamentary hearing into the botched scheme “at least a significant portion of new cases and the resulting second wave are attributable to the spread of the virus out of the hotel quarantine system”.

The second wave of infections triggered Australia’s toughest COVID-19 lockdown laws in Melbourne – including a night-time curfew and a 5-kilometre movement restriction.

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