Start COVID-19 inquiry now: PM faces demands for action on promise

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is being urged to launch a sweeping investigation into the country’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic by the year’s end to avoid turning the probe into a political blame game in the run-up to the next federal election.

Policy experts and the Australian Medical Association believe Albanese must follow last week’s decision to order an independent review of the $90 billion JobKeeper program with a wide-ranging inquiry into all aspects of federal and state governments’ responses to the pandemic.

Anthony Albanese promised in January last year to order an inquiry into Australia’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Albanese promised in January 2022, ahead of the federal election, to hold a “royal commission or some form of inquiry” into the country’s handling of COVID-19.

Pressed on the issue last month, he said that “when we are confident that we’re through those issues [continuing circulation of the virus], then we’ll examine it”.

AMA president Professor Steve Robson said the government needed to announce its inquiry and lay out what it would deal with before the end of the year, otherwise it would risk becoming a political blame game as the next federal election drew nearer.

“Now’s the perfect time to take the politics out of it, which is the destructive part of it, and keep the objectivity in to announce something and make it absolutely clear in the terms of reference that it is about the future,” he said.

Robson said the health future of Australia was only going to get more complicated, particularly as the population aged and climate change increased risks from issues including vector-borne diseases and supply chain disruption.

“We should count on the fact that pandemics are going to be more regular occurrences, and we’re going to have a more vulnerable population, and we’re probably going to be in a situation where environmental change is going to make the health system more vulnerable overall,” he said.

The right-aligned Institute of Public Affairs has already proposed its own terms of reference for a royal commission into the country’s handling of the pandemic.

It wants an inquiry to canvass issues ranging from how the virus entered the country, the impact of COVID-19 restrictions on those who did not contract the virus, the operation of national cabinet, and the design of policies such as JobKeeper.

IPA deputy executive director Daniel Wild said every person deserved a complete account of the country’s handling of COVID-19.

“There are numerous socio-economic harms caused as a consequence of pandemic response measures which have not yet been fully quantified but will be a significant ongoing cost of Australia’s pandemic response,” he said.

“Australians need reassurance that bureaucrats will no longer be able to unilaterally regulate basic human activity under threat of criminal sanction. This is urgent, and the federal government needs to get on with it.”

The left-wing Australia Institute also believes there needs to be a royal commission.

Institute director Richard Denniss said such an investigation had to look at the lines of responsibility between state and federal governments.

He said the fact then-prime minister Scott Morrison took on multiple ministries was evidence even he had concerns about the pressure from the pandemic on the running of government.

“The impact of the pandemic was so large, the challenge to policy was so large, and the chance of my children having to live through another disease outbreak is so big that we need to see what worked and what needs to change,” he said.

“We had a royal commission into the bushfires, why wouldn’t we have one into something as big as COVID?”

Britain’s independent inquiry into the government’s handing of Covid-19 this week heard evidence from former prime minister David Cameron over pre-pandemic cuts to health spending during his term in office.

While no nationwide inquiry into COVID in Australia has been conducted, there have been numerous independent and academic examinations carried out.

The most wide-ranging report was funded by the Paul Ramsay Foundation and headed by former Prime Minister and Cabinet Department secretary Peter Shergold. It made a series of recommendations to boost preparedness for future pandemics and increased use of experts.

Other investigations have looked at particular policies. A report headed by economists Steven Hamilton, Tristram Sainsbury and Geoffrey Liu which examined the early withdrawal of superannuation stimulus policy found up to a quarter of people drained their retirement savings within days of it starting.

Last week, federal Treasury revealed it would start its own independent investigation into the $90 billion JobKeeper program amid long-standing complaints that while it supported the economy through the pandemic it had enabled profit-making businesses to swell their bottom lines.

ANU tax expert Professor Bob Breunig said these and other studies showed there may not be a need for a full national inquiry or royal commission.

Breunig, who has co-authored research on the economic impact of the pandemic, said there were wrong decisions made during the pandemic, such as too much stimulus at the federal level, while states had mismanaged quarantine arrangements.

He said there had already been a great deal of analysis of Covid-era policies that future decision-makers could draw on if they were to face a similar problem such as the pandemic.

“What’s most important is the impact on the people who were there at the time. What they learnt at the time. We didn’t have an inquiry on how to handle the GFC – good decisions were made because we had good people in the right positions,” he said.

Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis from Jacqueline Maley. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter here.