Boy, was VIC quarantine ever designed to fail, at the Herald Sun:
The security company paid $44 million to guard Victoria’s quarantine hotels says it does not know why it scored the lion’s share of the work as part of the botched scheme.
Unified Security had just 89 permanent staff in March but ended up employing 1759 people, almost all through subcontractors.
It won the majority of the security work, despite not being on the state government’s preferred supplier list.
The bureaucrat who first approached Unified, Katrina Currie, revealed in emails one consideration was that Unified was indigenous-owned, making it suitable under the Andrews government’s inclusion policies.
Unified’s Victorian manager Nigel Coppick told the hotel quarantine inquiry on Thursday that he did not know why the company was awarded substantially more than other key contractors Wilson and MSS.
“I was contacted and I was asked if we could support,’’ he told counsel assisting the inquiry, Rachel Ellyard.
This one decision should cost the Andrews Government office. It is a failure of judgment so complete that it should never be trusted with a decision of gravity again.
