Former Victorian Health Minister Jenny Mikakos has taken to twitter to pull Premier Daniel Andrews up for not taking responsibility for the state’s failed hotel quarantine scheme.

Ms Mikakos published a statement on the popular social media platform accusing Mr Andrews for ‘political deflection’ following retired judge’s Jennifer Coate findings into what caused the second coronavirus outbreak.

More specifically, Ms Coate found no person or agency took responsibility for the decision to use private security guards at quarantine hotels, whose actions lead Victoria into their deadly second wave of COVID-19. Quarantine breaches involving private security guards seeded 99 per cent of Victoria’s deadly second wave of COVID infections, which in turn has led to more than 800 deaths of the elderly.

“The Coate inquiry has failed to answer key questions. I believe Victorians deserve to know the truth about an event that has so profoundly impacted them,” Ms Mikakos wrote on Twitter.

“They do not need another masterclass in political deflection from the Premier. Further, I am disappointed the inquiry decided to redact some phone records including the Premier’s calls in their entirety and to subject these to a non-publication order. In the interests of transparency all telephone call records provided relating to 27 March 2020 should be publicly released.”

https://twitter.com/JennyMikakos/status/1340914592302579712?s=20

In addition, Ms Mikakos expressed her sympathy to families that lost loved ones during the second wave and thanked health care workers for their tireless work this year.

https://twitter.com/JennyMikakos/status/1309636991785476096?s=20

Meanwhile, Mr Andrews has refused to step down despite being slammed for failing to cough-up answers as to who decided to use private security guards at quarantine hotels.

“If I could turn back the clock and receive daily reports on what happens in hotel quarantine as I do now, then, of course, I would,” the Premier stated.

“If we could have a system of oversight that was, I think, the best in the country back then, as we do now, then, of course, we would put those steps in place. But none of us have the ability to change history. For that I am sorry, we are sorry. My commitment and our commitment as leader of the government is to learn those lessons and to make sure that an error like this does not occur.”

The final report was damning of Premier Andrews and his government, which failed to reveal who made the actual decision to employ the guards.

“The decision to engage private security was not a decision made at the Ministerial level. The Premier and former (health) Minister Jenny Mikakos said they played no part in the decision,” Retired judge Jennifer Coate stressed.

“The fact remains that not one of the more than 70,000 documents produced to the Inquiry demonstrated a contemporaneous rationale for the decision to use private security as the first tier of enforcement, or an approval of that rationale in the upper levels of government.”

Finally, Ms Coate slammed the Premier for failing to answer who made the crucial decision to use private security at hotels, explaining that the nature of the findings is likely to shock the public.

“The Premier agreed that the question of how this occurred should be capable of being answered,” Ms Coate stated.

“The enforcement model for people detained in quarantine was a substantial part of an important public health initiative and it cost the Victorian community many millions of dollars. But it remained, as multiple submissions to the Inquiry noted, an orphan, with no person or department claiming responsibility.”

“The people of Victoria should understand, with clarity, how it was that such a decision to spend millions of dollars of public money came about. The people should be able to be satisfied that the action to proceed in this way was a considered one that addressed the benefits, risks and options available in arriving at such a decision. There was no evidence that any such considered process occurred, either on 27 March 2020 or in the days and weeks that followed, until the outbreaks occurred,” the report highlighted.