Eighties Australian pop group Little Heroes once sang that “Melbourne just isn’t New York”, but in terms of COVID-19 in Australia, Melbourne is not just New York, but Milan and London to boot. The situation in Victoria lurches from disaster to disaster.
Disaster almost entirely of the Andrews’ government’s making. Journalist Avi Yemini breaks it down:
Dan Andrews hired Gumtree security guards to manage the hotel quarantine of international arrivals. We now know that his dodgy security companies that he paid millions of dollars then underpaid overseas students to do the guarding. Andrews’ untrained guards then went and caught COVID from the travellers and spread the virus far and wide in our community, undetected for weeks.
The madness didn’t end there. The government then allowed a massive Black Lives Matter rally here in Melbourne – and shockingly, there was a mass outbreak weeks later at Housing Commission towers where numerous of the Black Lives Matter protesters lived…I’m no rocket scientist, but I think I got this one figured.
So, just what did the untrained, underpaid security guards have to deal with? The guards have long been maligned by a government whisper campaign that alleged sexual shenanigans, but it might also be that the guards were thrown in the deep end of some literally crazy stuff.
Poorly trained security guards on a so-called “crazy floor” of the Rydges Hotel in Melbourne’s Swanston Street may have let COVID-19 escape into the community, after they became overwhelmed by hysterical guests who were screaming, crying and banging on walls, begging to be let out.
This week’s independent inquiry into the spread of the virus is expected to hear evidence that guests were begging, pleading and even offering money to security guards for a cigarette, a lighter, Valium or a breath of fresh air.
Many of those travellers, especially in the early days of the virus, were infectious, and the guards seemed unable to control them, with mental health professionals eventually called in.
Like some of the precious princesses in hotel quarantine in New Zealand, some of the quarantined travellers put on a right song and dance.
The inquiry will hear that guards in one case struggled to handle a distraught women who collapsed and cried in the hotel hallway before making a bolt for the door, insisting on her need to “breathe”[…]
A guest of Rydges, released from the hotel after returning from Europe in April, has told The Australian he had been put on what guards described as the “crazy floor” of his hotel, “with people going absolutely nuts”.
“They had mental health people coming to sedate them,” said the guest, who asked not to be named. “They were asking for Valium, for sleeping pills.
“They were begging to be let out and running for the doors.”
Victoria is not alone in quarantining arrivals in hotels, so why has Victoria’s quarantine regime been such an unmitigated disaster?
The Victorian government was alone among the states in deciding to engage private security firms to manage hotel quarantine. By contrast, NSW relied on police officers, who are far more experienced at handling civilians under stress.
As governments will do when they want to kick the can of responsibility down the road, the Andrews Labor government has announced an inquiry.
But neither Premier Andrews nor any of his ministers will be appearing.
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