Thursday, 3 August 2023

Department of Health

Georgie CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (17:39): (369) My adjournment matter this evening is for the attention of the Minister for Health, and it is in relation to a very alarming report that was released last week around the Office of the Victorian Information Commissioner’s (OVIC) findings about a very disturbing misuse of personal information that occurred through COVID. Of course we were aware of that at the time, when a contact tracer had gone to the home of a woman who was isolating, and quite frankly it was just extraordinary what went on. But the real concern is that there were no police checks done by the Department of Health to ensure that these people employed by the Department of Health to go out and visit were safe.

The person in question, I understand, had a criminal history, was on bail at the time and used personal information from the department to attend the home of a woman who was isolating, as I said. OVIC goes on to speak about the failings that went on, and it was extraordinary how this actually occurred. He purported to be an authorised officer and gained entry to her home and bedroom, where he threatened her with deportation unless she performed sexual acts. I mean, it was an absolute disgrace that this man was able to get that information because the department did no checks.

What is even more disturbing is that the individual commenced work on 3 June in 2021 but it was not until he committed these serious crimes some five weeks later that it was detected that no police check had been undertaken by the department. It should have been undertaken. It is just extraordinary that this government, with so many issues throughout the whole of COVID, just did not have the checks and balances in place. It is why we need a royal commission – to understand what went on and what worked and what did not. Clearly this is one of those issues where there was a serious breach of personal privacy, and the poor woman was abused by this criminal.

The action I seek is for the minister to provide to Parliament what improvements have been made around any surge workforce that they would require should another event like COVID come to Victoria – another event where there needs to be surge capacity in the workforce – so that we have police checks and we do not have these criminals going into innocent Victorians’ homes.