Reports that staff hired to work at Victoria’s quarantine hotels have been sent home on full pay is the latest failure of Daniel Andrews’ botched hotel quarantine program.
Victoria’s returned traveller program was stopped in late June due to the bungled hotel quarantine debacle. Since then, a number of staff hired to work at these hotels under the management of Corrections Victoria have been receiving up to $2,000 per week to sit at home on standby.
These pay-for-no-work cases come as some employees working at the quarantine hotels continue to receive a JobKeeper payment, and follow serious breaches by private security staff hired by the Andrews Labor Government that have caused Victoria’s second COVID-19 wave.
Furthermore, a number of Corrections Victoria staff seconded to work at the quarantine hotels now find themselves unable to return to their regular job, despite staff shortages and ongoing COVID-19 breaches throughout Victoria’s prisons.
Daniel Andrews has now twice failed to ensure the proper operation of Victoria’s quarantine hotel program and jeopardised the health and safety of all Victorians.
Comments attributable to Shadow Minister for Corrections, David Southwick:
“Daniel Andrews’ botched hotel quarantine program is revealing itself to be the single largest public policy failure in Australia’s history.
“It’s clear the bungled hotel quarantine is going from bad to worse, firstly hiring untrained and unprofessional private security guards and now paying staff thousands of dollars to do nothing.
“With ongoing COVID-19 outbreaks and staff shortages across our prison system, it’s unacceptable that staff are sitting at home doing nothing when they could be helping with contact tracing or working back in our currently stretched corrections system.”
