Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews – plus his right-hand man Chris Eccles and a handful of other senior office staff – have been asked to hand over their phone records and text messages to Victoria’s hotel quarantine inquiry.
The info was requested earlier during the weekend, and Andrews has since replied that he’ll hand over all phone records, plus relevant data from messaging apps like WhatsApp and Signal.
“All of that detail will be given to the board, that will be done as soon as possible,” he said during his daily press conference.
“I can’t give an exact timeline because Telstra and others have to provide us with those details, but that will be provided just as they asked.”
Andrews implied that he was eager to see the outcome of the inquiry as the rest of us.
“All of us are entitled to the answers,” he added.
“It’s an independent process.”
The hope is that by looking at the call logs of the Premier and his colleagues from the early weeks of the pandemic, it will shed some light on who exactly is responsible for the state’s messed up hotel quarantine setup.
The records for March 27, in particular, might just reveal whose decision it was to use private security guards, who were later accused of trying to Snapchat guests, asking them out for coffee and even hooking up with them.
The inquiry has already heard that former Victorian Police Chief Graham Ashton somehow found out about the hotel quarantine scheme and the use of private security guards before it was announced to the public.
We also already know Ashton texted Andrew’s right-hand man Ecceles as well as Australian Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw on the same day about the use of security guards.
The full phone records should hopefully show a more full story.
