Tuesday 14 July 2020
Labor’s hotel quarantine bungle excuses wearing thin
Continued internal brawling within the Victorian Labor Party is distracting from the state’s ability to get to the bottom of what happened with the bungled hotel quarantine debacle.
Infighting has seen another series of leaked emails, this time with The Age reporting that “Top bureaucrats warned senior health officials at the beginning of the Andrews government’s botched hotel quarantine scheme that security guards were ill-equipped for the work and demanded police be called in to take control.”
But the Premier and his ministers are refusing to answer questions and continue to hide behind an inquiry rather than being upfront with Victorians.
The Liberal Nationals today called on the Andrews Labor Government to be honest with Victorians and stop covering up the problems and mismanagement around hotel quarantine, including releasing emails and documents associated with the decision to use pub bouncers.
The millions of Victorians locked up through no fault of their own, need the Premier to stop dodging questions and start giving answers.
Comments attributable to Shadow Minster for Health, Georgie Crozier:
“Every question that Andrews gets on hotel quarantine, he hides behind an inquiry. Victorians want answers now and expect the truth from our Premier.
“If only the Australian Defence Force was brought in to manage hotel quarantine when it was first offered last month, Victorians may have been enjoying the freedoms that every other state in the country is right now.
“Victorians aren’t in lockdown because of bad luck, but because of the Andrews Labor Government’s bad decisions: hotel quarantine failures, a failure to act quickly on contact tracing, the mismanagement of clusters and sending mixed messages over protests.”
