Never hold an inquiry unless you know the outcome. The Coates Inquiry into Victoria’s hotel quarantine disaster has already delivered the first outcome premier Daniel Andrews wanted: providing a convenient (if false) shield to hide behind and avoid answering questions from the media. It’s also being urged to deliver the other outcome Andrews wants: to clear he and his Labor ministers of all blame and pass the buck on to a few disposable public servants.
But, if Andrews thinks he’s got away with it for now, he should be looking nervously at another looming inquiry – one that he assuredly didn’t want. Not to mention one with far more teeth.
The chief of WorkSafe Victoria, Colin Radford, has far more power to probe Australia’s greatest industrial disaster – the hotel quarantine fiasco – than the government-appointed investigator Jennifer Coate.
Not only does Radford have the power and ability to get behind the “don’t knows” that studded the Coate inquiry but he will required by law to take his inquiry into much broader areas to find out what really happened. Because of what has already been revealed in the Coate inquiry, this is an incredibly dangerous situation for sections of the Victorian cabinet and public service.
Under the “industrial manslaughter” laws first brought in by Labor premier Steve Bracks, then expanded by Daniel Andrews, WorkSafe has wide powers to investigate and criminally prosecute employers – including the government – for failing to provide a safe workplace. The laws were a sop to Labor’s union cronies, designed to “get” bosses, who no longer had to be directly responsible for any incident that led to injury or loss of life, just in charge of the workplace.
Radford can cross-examine anybody and has wide powers to view documents and other material. The parliament gave him these powers, believing they would be necessary to extract incriminating evidence from corporate executives involved in deaths caused by unsafe workplaces.
The WorkSafe chief is a Labor appointment, as so many of these quangos are, but that doesn’t mean that Andrews and his henchmen can breathe easy.
After all, under the Andrews legislation, if WorkSafe declines to prosecute, the CEO must explain in detail why not. As well, individuals can then ask the Director of Public Prosecutions to prosecute – and again, the DPP must explain in full any failure to do so.
The politicians and public servants in Victoria remember Radford as a former press secretary to premiers Steve Bracks and John Brumby and are hoping he won’t do his job and will simply either paper over the whole thing or delay and delay. But more than 700 people have died, and vast areas of the community have been brought to their knees. The public won’t stand for a whitewash either from Radford or the Director of Public Prosecutions, Kerri Judd.
Frankly, given how many Victorians genuinely seem to think Andrews “has done a good job under tough circumstances”, I wouldn’t be taking bets on that.
To find out who authorised the appointment of private security guards Bradford will need to take a different approach to the top down investigation by Coate.
The way to discover that aspect of the truth is to use old fashioned journalistic techniques and start at the bottom and talk to those that were undertaking the supposed security, then to organisations that employed them. When you reach the prime contractor or contractors you look at who signed the contract from the government. And from that base level of governmental authorisation, step by step you go up the ladder and discover who authorised each action and finally you reach the point where a document is signed and there is a dispute as to who authorised the signatory. That isolates the fault among the current showers of “don’t knows”.
Also, along the way, there were strange conversations with the trade union movement and they too should be investigated to determine whether unions had a role in the decision-making.
Bradford has the power to do all those things.
There will be plenty of ugly skeletons to come rattling out of the closet if a genuinely public-minded prosecutor shakes hard enough. It remains to be seen if there’s anyone left in “Dandrewstan” with the bottle to take on the Dear Leader.
On the other hand, the prospect of just such an inquiry with real teeth only sharpens the likelihood that Andrews will “choose” to retire on his tenth anniversary as leader, at the end of this year.
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