Hotel quarantine fiasco an 'unprecedented failure of governance and accountability'

The Australian’s Editor-at-Large Paul Kelly says Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews' performance at Friday’s hotel quarantine inquiry in many ways demonstrated an “unprecedented failure of governance and accountability”.

Mr Andrews testified that he had no expectation of support from the Australian Defence Force to run the hotel quarantine scheme.

However, an examination of Mr Andrews' statements over the past six months by Sky News host Peta Credlin uncovered a statement in March where he stated categorically that he had been offered the use of Australian troops by the Prime Minister.

Letters obtained by Sky News Political Editor Andrew Clennell also revealed Prime Minister Scott Morrison personally pressured Premier Andrews to accept ADF troop support on at least three separate occasions in July.

Mr Kelly told Sky News there is a "closed circle in terms of the failure of the government and the failure of the Premier to properly explain to the people of Victoria what happened”.

“We know with documentary evidence the details of the Morrison government’s offers to Victoria at both the political and bureaucratic level to get ADF support," he said.

“You would have thought that after the deaths of so many people, the hardship imposed on millions, the damage done to the Victorian economy, that we would have a leader in Victoria with the decency and sense of obligation to explain what happened.

“Well we don’t have that. Instead we have the Health Minister quitting after the Premier held her accountable.

“It is extraordinary that we now have a government that cannot explain itself and cannot explain its own ineptitude."

Видео Hotel quarantine fiasco an 'unprecedented failure of governance and accountability' канала Sky News Australia