Sydney COVID-19 outbreak: Police seek legal advice into whether Bondi limo driver broke order

Police investigating the actions of the limousine driver at the centre of the Bondi COVID-19 outbreak have sought external legal guidance in a bid to determine whether the employee broke a public health order.

According to reports, the unvaccinated driver had not been wearing a mask while transporting international flight crew. But it appears the NSW state government had not imposed a public health order requiring employees to do so, only guidelines.

Asked about the investigation at Friday's press conference, NSW policy deputy commissioner Gary Worboys said Worksafe is also involved in establishing the extent of the driver’s compliance.

“An expert in the transport area is also assisting the police investigation, and yesterday Commissioner Fuller engaged senior legal counsel to again review the advice that we have and see where other offences may have been committed.

“I would hope that we would have something more on that in the coming days. But what's also clear is that as police go about the investigation, they look at CCTV where it's available and the vast majority of transport drivers have complied, not just with the guidelines, but also the health order.”

Read more: Sydney suburbs in lockdown as Bondi’s COVID cluster grows

The public health order requires all employees involved in the hotel quarantine process to comply with daily saliva testing in a bid to catch any positive cases before they spread into the community. When news of the community transmission broke, NSW health said the limousine driver’s positive test was his first result recorded in the system.

It comes after the driver told A Current Affair that he doesn’t believe he was patient zero, and instead suspects he caught COVID-19 from sitting near a man who was sneezing at a café in Vaucluse. He said he hadn’t been working in the two days before returning a positive test and believes he became infected while out in the community. Speaking anonymously, the man said he hadn’t been vaccinated yet because he has a family history of bloodclots.

Chief medical officer Dr Kerry Chant confirmed authorities hadn’t been able to definitive confirm the limo driver was patient zero, but his genome sequencing matched that of the Delta variant that had been recorded in the US. Given he was transporting FedEx flight crew who had arrived from the US, Chant said it fit with the health authority’s “plausible hypothesis”.

Also speaking on Friday, NSW health minister Brad Hazzard admitted there has been a small number of people working in the hotel quarantine system who have not complied with the expectations of the health order.

“We've been on this journey for 16 months, and by far the majority of our community have complied with the orders and with the guidelines that are set under those rules,” he said. “We will now be having orders that will be effective from 4pm today requiring that people comply with those guidelines effectively. We're stepping up the guidelines on mask-wearing for those drivers of people coming in from international flights, whether passenger flights or cargo flights.

“We will have the guidelines that have existed pushed into very clear orders with very clear consequences. I have to say this though, we also have to recognise that it’s very hard to make a law against stupidity.

“No matter what we do, people have to actually apply some common sense, and they have to understand that we're living in a pandemic that's killed almost 4 million people across the world.”

Read more: Masks mandatory in workplaces as Sydney COVID-19 cluster balloons

Australia’s health regulations are complicated by the fact that each state government is responsible for mandating its own public orders. Currently, only Queensland and Western Australia have public health orders in place requiring employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19.

WA requires all employees working within the state’s hotel quarantine system to be vaccinated, which includes police and medical staff, security, cleaners and ADF personnel. In Queensland, all health service employees, ambulance staff, hospital and health service contractors must be vaccinated.