Peta Credlin: Transparency and truth are real casualties of pandemic

State chief health officers might be conscientious professionals but why should any authority, no matter how eminent, be accepted without question, Peta Credlin asks.

If there’s one phrase that’s been constantly on the lips of our leaders throughout this pandemic, it’s been “following the health advice”. We’ve closed our borders, locked down our cities, and devastated many businesses because, we’ve been told, chief health officers said we had to.

In just one of many instances, the acting Premier of Victoria told us this week that he had “no choice” but to extend the Melbourne lockdown based on the health advice – even though, as it turned out, that advice had been based on “false positive” tests suggesting there could be “fleeting transmission” of the latest Covid variant.

Likewise, late last year, the Adelaide lockdown was based on health advice that, in turn, rested on the misapprehension that the virus had been transmitted on a pizza box.

Another lie.

Victorian Acting Premier James Merlino has been dealing with the Covid crisis. Picture: NCA NewsWire/David Crosling

If war is too important to be left to the generals (as the saying goes) why are we then subcontracting the management of a pandemic to unelected and unaccountable state health officials, given few have expertise in infectious diseases and most disagree with each other. Surely it’s the role of elected and accountable governments to listen to the health advice, but then to make their own decisions and take responsibility for them, rather than palming it off to others who they think the public aren’t allowed to question?

Under Victoria’s draconian state of emergency, the chief health officer has “broad powers” to do “whatever is necessary” to “eliminate or reduce a serious risk to public health”. In practice, this happens in close consultation with the Premier who is, of course, ultimately accountable to the parliament and the people.

Even so, it’s effectively a health dictatorship. Indeed, one of the oddest features of the handling of this pandemic has been governments’ willingness to defer to expert advice which, almost without exception, is not made public. I can understand why politicians under pressure prefer to have others, at least notionally, make the decisions, especially if they wear the halo still largely associated with the medical profession.

It saves politicians from having to explain and justify the decisions for which they should be accountable.

But it makes an absolute travesty of democracy. After all, what’s the point of elections if the elected leaders then just hand over all decision-making to bureaucrats?

I have no doubt the chief health officers are conscientious professionals and have a prodigious work ethic. But why should any authority, no matter how eminent, be accepted without question?

Victoria's chief health officer Brett Sutton has been under fire since the latest local Covid transmissions. Picture: Asanka Ratnayake/Getty

In the case of our chief health officers, Victoria’s Brett Sutton was a mid-level public health official until March 2017 with more credentials in climate change than infectious disease, and seems last to have had clinical experience almost 20 years ago.

NSW’s Kerry Chant seems to have been a public health official, albeit a senior one, almost since graduating in medicine.

Queensland’s Jeannette Young seems to have had just six years of clinical experience before becoming a health official.

South Australia’s Nicola Spurrier seems to have combined some clinical work as a paediatrician with 30 years policy work in child and aboriginal health. And, Western Australia’s Geoffrey Robertson, a reserve RAN officer, has also served as UN bioweapons inspector.

How dependent should millions of people’s lives be on their opinions? The only one with any extensive epidemiological experience is the Commonwealth’s chief medical officer Paul Kelly.

The only current clinician with infectious disease experience seems to be the just departed Commonwealth deputy CMO, Nick Coatsworth, who last month took issue with the “zero Covid” stance of all the states save NSW, declaring we “cannot ride out the pandemic in an eliminationist bunker” and “ultimately when we allow Covid-19 back on our shores and it circulates in our community, that we are prepared and comfortable for that to happen”.

Chief medical officer Professor Paul Kelly has “extensive epidemiological experience”, Peta Credlin says. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Martin Ollman

There’s a lot of casualties in a pandemic but it’s transparency and truth that have taken a real hit in Australia. How can governments defer almost unquestioningly to these health experts when state-to-state, so many of them disagree?

In terms of expenditure, I’ve never seen so much money thrown around with so little scrutiny and publicly available justification.

Before bailing out Victoria again last week, Josh Frydenberg should have required the release of Brett Sutton’s health advice and allow the public and real experts, such as epidemiologists, to test it. Even plans for a new $200 million quarantine facility in Victoria deserve a closer look.

It’s a 500-bed centre, so that’s $400,000 per bed, and won’t be ready until January when we are all supposed to be vaccinated anyway. Do the numbers, it just doesn’t add up.

There’s no doubt Covid has been the worst disaster in most Australians’ lifetime. And beyond the first lockdown, it hasn’t been a natural disaster but a man-made one caused by repeated human error.

Surely, we all deserve to know the truth about what has happened, why it has happened, and how we can avoid such mistakes in the future. And in the states where pandemic management has been a standout, like NSW, learning from them, for next time, shouldn’t just be something good to do, but mandatory.

Watch Peta Credlin on Sky News, weeknights at 6pm