Holiday hell

Of all the bad ways to stop a pandemic, Victoria deployed one of the worst in the middle of the Christmas break. By Nick Cater.

We will never if know if any cases of COVID-19 were prevented by Victoria’s knee-jerk closure of its borders with less than 36 hours’ notice in the middle of the Christmas break. However, we do know that of all the bad ways to stop a pandemic, this was one of the worst. The misery, uncertainty and frustration caused to thousands of Victorians was bad enough; the bureaucratic omni-shambles only made it worse.

Most serious of all was the suspension of basic freedoms under Victoria’s much-abused emergency powers provisions. Perhaps someone was putting rohypnol in the teapots in the Parliament House canteen back in 2008 when the enabling legislation was passed. Surely now, after nine months of ugly authoritarian rule, Victorians should be clamouring for its removal from the statute books at the earliest opportunity.

The experience of several hundred inbound passengers at Melbourne Airport on New Year’s Day illustrates the cascading impact of panicked, illiberal and impractical control measures. Their effectiveness is doubtful, but the misery they inflict on decent citizens is a certainty.

Passengers arriving from non-metropolitan NSW airports well before the midnight “come-home-now” deadline were greeted by officials in smocks, masks and face shields who marshalled them into lines and quizzed them.

Anybody who admitted to having been inside the “red zone” (formerly known as Sydney) in the previous fortnight was ordered to wait in the gate lounge. There they sat for several hours with no bottled water and no food. The detainees (as they were called) were discouraged from visiting the lavatory on safety grounds. Those who insisted suffered the humiliation of an escort.

Questions about how long they would stay in the airport or how they might apply for an exemption were met with shrugs. One young couple made the brave decision to leave the terminal. They later handed themselves in to Goulburn police, and are subject to $38,000 in fines.

Finally, after five hours, an authorised officer served the detainees with detention notices. “You are a prohibited person,” the notice stated. Many protested; they had flown in from the green zone and were expecting to self-isolate at home. Some asked to remain at the airport until an exemption could be considered, still believing this to be a bad mix-up. Others begged to return to NSW, where they had children or partners. All received the same answer: “You have now been detained. You are a red zone arrival. Your only option is to go to the hotel.”

At about 4pm, the lunch-less, dehydrated, red-zone, prohibited persons were marched on to the tarmac to board a SkyBus to hotel quarantine. They included parents with infants. The luggage wasn’t ready and there followed a harrowing standoff between the detainees and bus driver. A type-one diabetic was stranded without his medication and had not eaten in hours. The issuing of bottled water after pleas from passengers only made life worse for the bathroom-deprived.

After several hours’ wait, a supervising officer from the airport appeared to load luggage on to the bus by himself. His anger and frustration were palpable.

It was early evening by the time the SkyBus pulled up outside a grey-brick building with the now Orwellian-sounding name of Holiday Inn. A lady in blue boarded and started reading a prepared speech. When she got to the clause informing them the Victorian government expected them to contribute to the cost of their detention, the bus erupted in protest. She yelled that the sooner she finished the speech, the sooner everyone would be allowed off the bus.

Finally, after almost eight hours of bureaucratic hell in airport land, the detainees were released into the Kafkaesque nightmare of a quarantine hotel. They were referred to an online form that later turned out to be for international arrivals. The act under which the unfortunates were detained suggested writing to the Chief Health Officer was the proper avenue for appeal. But he was on holiday and his office did not respond to any emails.

The official response from the Department of Justice was that the Department of Health and Human Services was in charge, while the DHHS referred inquiries to the Department of Justice. The number for the Department of Grand Stuff-Ups, which seems to be particularly active in Victoria these days, is yet to be listed.

It should come as no surprise that a decision made at 3.30pm on New Year’s Eve should find a system so woefully unprepared. The battalion of inexperienced officers on sentry duty were authorised at the stroke of the Chief Health Officer’s pen to wield draconian powers but have no authority to be lenient or employ their own common sense.

In any case, the system has been overloaded by requests from those in quarantine hotels, some 4000 stranded Victorians seeking to cross the hard border, and by international travellers.

No matter how large the perceived threat from COVID-19, and putting aside the extent to which it has been exaggerated, there is no excuse for the arbitrary detention of citizens merely for breaking poorly articulated edicts issued in panic.

The law deviously named The Public Health and Wellbeing Act that gives carte blanche to so-called authorised officers to dispense with due process and trample on human dignity is un-Australian. We might argue about whether we are young or one as a nation, but there is no argument about the word free.

When the Plague Royal Commission is called, as it surely must be, it should be tasked with recommending a better way to seal our international borders and remove any temptation for populist premiers to restrict freedom of internal movement.