The Victoria Hotel COVID
Quarantine fiasco and the Ruby Princess disembarkation debacle bring the workings
of bureaucracy into spotlight. This saga agonised Australia and perhaps reinforced
some of our regional hard border mentalities. Let’s face it - if bureaucracy
makes certain decisions that don’t make sense, who can blame the public for exercising
a healthy degree of cynicism?
I point out examples
from both State and Federal bureaucracies. Let’s start with disembarkation
issues.
The first thing that
struck me is the story that NSW and the Feds have arrangements that apparently
require a Federal Border Force Officer to interpret medical reports and make
decisions about traveller movements in place of a qualified Public Health
Officer.
People hear this stuff and they
think are you kidding me? What sense can a Border Force Officer make of medical
lingo? How does this help with Australia health safety? Where are NSW Health
authorities?
The Commissioner of Inquiry
into the Ruby Princess Cruiser rightly put the responsibility on NSW Health
Department. Not even the “Yes Minister” British classic would have prepared us
for what was to play out in real life leading to 663 known COVID infections and 28
dead. First NSW Health Department did not follow its own regulation framework –
it chose not to require the Ruby Princess passengers to isolate. As the
Commissioner of Inquiry put it:
13.64 The directive to allow passengers to onward travel interstate and internationally after disembarkation on 19 March did not appropriately contemplate or comply with the terms of the Public Health Order that came into effect on 17 March, which required all cruise ship passengers entering the State from any other country to isolate themselves in suitable accommodation for 14 days. Under the terms of the Public Health Order, the State Government should have arranged suitable accommodation for all passengers who were not residents of the State. See Inquiry Link
NSW Health Department
also allowed passengers to take further travel despite knowing some of these
travellers were either infected or close contact of those infected beggars
belief. In turn the travellers infected many other people as they journeyed on
interstate and around the world. The Inquiry Report observes:
‘’13.65 The fact sheet linked to an email sent to passengers at 10:46am on 20 March incorrectly advised that they were permitted to continue with onward travel, despite being identified as “close contacts” of a confirmed COVID-19 case. Although this advice was corrected by NSW Health by the evening of 21 March, it was at that stage too late to prevent a considerable number of interstate and international passengers from onward travelling, including some passengers who were symptomatic during transit.” See Inquiry Link
But also bear in mind
that even many passengers had no idea that their luxury cruise liner had some
infected people. So sadly many of them infected others unaware of their own
situation – this is because NSW Health did not promptly warn them that they
were disembarking from an infected ship.
Now back to Federal
bureaucracy: Australian Border Force refused to provide Qantas and Virgin
Airlines with the Ruby Princess Passenger Manifest despite requests from these
airlines. In other words, if relevant airline staff had access to the list of
passengers from the Ruby Princess they would have prevented them from boarding
aircrafts and spreading Coronavirus interstate and around the world.
According to the ABC,
“Six months after the Ruby Princess
docked in Sydney, a formal process for sharing passenger manifests with those
who need them has not been established.” ABC Link
If this is the case,
what is senior Federal and State bureaucracy doing to ensure that health information
is shared on ‘need-to-know base’ where broader public safety is at risk?
Then there are issues
about bureaucracy not prioritising prompt swab-processing and communicating
results from the Ruby Princess. And just letting passengers transfer to airport
terminals and the like; then raising alarm when it is almost too late and most
people have long moved on. Even after the Inquiry, this does not make sense.
People puzzle that how does this stuff happen given some obvious public sector
standards and so called values?
Is this the same healthcare
bureaucracy expected to support manage safe inter-state border movements if
these are opened prematurely? Follow the drift?
Common folk look at
the Ruby Princess disembarkation mismanagement - even before the Inquiry Report
came out, and they reason that it was a disaster waiting to happen. Yet
bureaucracy took the view that “privacy” was absolute. Why didn’t NSW State
Health request passengers to sign consent forms for health info to be shared on
“need-to-know basis”? Why is this situation different from patient health info
that is shared everyday around the country on “need-to-know basis”?
Individual safety we
presume is one of the most paramount value or principle in public health. So
when healthcare bureaucrats make perplexing decisions leading to substantial covid-19
spread as was the case with the Ruby Princess, it is no wonder people remain
troubled. Why did bureaucracy not exercise its professional responsibility? Are
we to take it that this was a political decision and bureaucrats had no say? If
not, what went wrong?
Again when people
think about border closures or relaxing them, I presume this kind of saga comes
to mind. It has become part of our archaeology of memory for now.
Disembarkation issues
are not isolated. Back in July the media reported about Jetstar passengers who
arrived in NSW from Melbourne, disembarked and headed home without covid-19
screening. Apparently NSW State Health Officials were not available. Here is SMH Story Link
Aren’t these bureaucrats meant to be at the airport to screen passengers in a timely way? Were they swamped with workloads? Are they under-resourced? What measures are in place across other airports across the country to ensure Public Health Officers conduct their traveller screenings in a timely way and monitor that no arrivals fall through the cracks?
On the Victoria Hotel
Quarantine saga - I was listening to the unfolding news. Among other things it
sounds as if the quarantine roles are so fragmented and confused.
Now, I understand
some of our neo-liberal bureaucratic requirements to put out services to
tenders and contracts. Surely if Victoria Health Department wished to fragment
the operational tasks that way; then those dividing up these tasks will need to
be across the nitty gritty of your tender specifications and capabilities of contracted
external parties.
If authorities
involved in business contracting and compliance in delivery have limited idea
of what was to occur at hotel quarantine sites from a health point of view, no
wonder there were gaps in infection controls.
It looks like against
the background of neo-liberal bureaucratic structures, perhaps bureaucrats
focussed on doing their own fragmented bits. It is not even clear from the
Victoria Premier’s press conferences there was no Lead Agency to provide
oversight on health matters that cut across the board amongst multiple
Government Departments involved at Hotel Quarantine sites.
As we move forward we
can now only watch how the workings of bureaucracy evolve. It still seems a puzzle
given the role confusion, dysfunctional diffusion, role fragmentation and lack
of trained professional support and oversight (ala untrained security guards).
To this you can add the seemingly avoidance of sensitive responsibilities (ala doing
nothing just letting people disembark from the Ruby Princess regardless of
consequences).
On one hand they say
accountability and probity is part of what drives modern bureaucracy. Yet in
both the Ruby Princess and Victoria Hotel Quarantine situation, we missed the
mark. Perhaps The Commissioner of Inquiry into Ruby Princess is right to puzzle
that what recommendations can he make when the findings are that these public
servants need to actually do their basic job?
The other question of
course is the environment these public servants find themselves in – who is to
say. Are they able to do their job properly and survive? We live in a complex
world.
Oops, one more
thing. The Commissioner of Inquiry into the Victoria Hotel Quarantine saga draws attention that the Victoria Government
named its Hotel Quarantine Plan as “Operation Soteria”. She goes on to say “Soteria is the Greek goddess of rescue and safety” See Day 3 Proceedings, Page 22, section 40. At this point I chuckled a little and likely inside trembled, thought to myself run fast to the safety in the God of Abraham, eternal and temporal.
Links
Links
Special
Commission of Inquiry into the Ruby Princess, New South Wales Australia
Victoria Covid-19 Hotel Quarantine Inquiry
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