The government through the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet is holding an inquiry into the federal government’s COVID-19 Response. The inquiry is wide-ranging, but restricted to the actions of the federal government, or the National Cabinet.

Our submission concentrated on governance issues, including the federal government’s failure to intervene to stop vaccination mandates, despite the prime minister promising that he would introduce legislation.

You can download the report by clicking here.

Other areas we highlighted were:

• Lack of transparency in terms of what policy and why was being adopted, as well as in terms of the scientific and medical advice being received, and the ability for it to be openly discussed.
• Reliance on modellers who had a proven track record of bad modelling.
• Too much power was concentrated in the hands of inappropriate appointees and was held too narrowly.
• Lack of accountability and oversight.
• Absence of cost benefit analysis.
• Lack of viewpoint diversity amongst advisors.
• Failure to stick to pre-existing pandemic plans.
• Failure of the Human Rights Commission to intervene when rights like that to informed consent were denied citizens.
• Ruinous effect of the Commonwealth government financially under-writing poor policy by state governments through excessive assistance to individuals and businesses.

All Australian government’s responses to COVID-19 collectively represented the largest ever failure in Australian public health. We need to learn the lessons so as not to repeat the mistakes.