Brunswick Remedial Massage: Health Department may have broken its own laws during hotel quarantine

The department also appeared to ignore legal advice it commissioned to review the requirement. Barrister Sarala Fitzgerald advised the department that the daily review had to be done thoroughly.

In reality, it appears it was hardly done at all.

Patrick Enright leaves hotel quarantine in June. Credit:Justin McManus

Patrick Enright returned in June from New Zealand when the country had been coronavirus-free for almost three weeks. He was detained at a Crown hotel in Southbank for two weeks, and no review was done despite his requests.

“Having come from New Zealand at a time when the country had basically eradicated the virus, I didn’t pose a credible risk, let alone a serious risk to public health, and I resented being in a seeding ground for the virus,” Mr Enright said on Tuesday.

When staff rang to check his wellbeing, Mr Enright queried when his daily review would be done, as was required under his detention notice.

“They had no idea what I was talking about,” he said. “I was one of a whole plane-load of New Zealanders and about 40 of us ended up at the Crown hotel – so I was one of a whole cohort detained who did not present a credible risk.”

Mr Ihle, in his summation on Monday, said evidence to the inquiry from DHHS officer Murray Smith had shown cases were reviewed daily according to one criterion: “Whether the person had completed the required 14-day period of quarantine.”

“The daily reviews were done en masse by simply looking at where in the 14-day period a person sat,” Mr Ihle said. “It is clear that the daily reviews were not conducted in accordance with the advice the department received.”

The Health Department was relying on authorised officers – drawn from fields as diverse as park rangers, forestry officers and council parking officers – to conduct the daily checks.

Hugh de Kretser said he repeatedly asked for a daily review of his detention, as required by law. Credit:Ken Irwin

Another hotel quarantine guest was Hugh de Kretser, executive director of the Human Rights Law Centre, who was detained in June at Carlton’s Rydges on Swanston hotel.

Mr de Kretser, a lawyer and human rights advocate, told the inquiry he asked three different authorised officers or team leaders if his detention was being reviewed daily.

“One officer seemed surprised by the question,” Mr de Kretser said. “Another told me that the nurses do the review, presumably referring to the daily nurse welfare check, and another told me that detention ‘wasn’t really reviewed’.”

A DHHS spokeswoman said the matter was now before the inquiry board, which would assess it and make appropriate recommendations.

It also emerged on Tuesday that the program set up to replace hotel quarantine, to accommodate COVID-positive members of the community and health workers unable to isolate at home, has had problems containing the coronavirus.

Nine workers in the scheme have tested positive for COVID-19, the state’s Justice Department confirmed. The department took over the program from DHHS.

Five staff from security and cleaning contractor Spotless, two Alfred Health staff at the hotels, a DHHS staff member, and a police officer contracted COVID-19.

The failure to contain the coronavirus within the compulsory hotel quarantine system in Victoria sparked the state’s second wave of infections and the stage four shutdown, with devastating health and economic ramifications.

On Monday, lawyers assisting the hotel quarantine inquiry blamed failures in the program for the deaths of 768 people and the infection of 18,000 others.

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