Senior academic says Covid ‘no excuse to bypass accountability’ by governments

Public health interventions during the pandemic exposed flaws in the systems intended to ensure governments can be called upon to justify their actions, according to a senior legal academic.

A healthcare worker conducts a temperature test as people arrive to check in at a Covid-19 Vaccination hub in Sydney. Picture: Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images

Public health interventions during the pandemic exposed flaws in the systems intended to ensure governments can be called upon to justify their actions, according to a senior legal academic.

“Accountability might look different in an emergency, but it does not need to disappear,” ­adminis­trative law specialist and UNSW associate professor ­Janina Boughey told the Samuel Griffith Society conference at the weekend.

“Even with a web of laws and systems designed to hold the executive to account, much still rests on a government’s willingness to comply, and commitment to explaining their decisions to the public. There are loopholes which can be exploited to evade accountability and transparency. But these can and should be fixed.”

Dr Boughey said there had been inadequate scrutiny of delegated legislation, which is the term for the laws made by parliaments but then delegated by them to agencies.

The Senate committee for the scrutiny of delegated legislation had calculated that about 20 per cent of the 249 pieces of such legislation made in response to Covid-19 were exempt from disallowance by the parliament and scrutiny by the committee.

In NSW, the parliament did not sit for most of the long lockdown in 2021. “While premiers, chief health officers and ministers appeared at press conferences, this is not a substitute for oversight by our elected representatives,” Dr Boughey said.

“There was no reason why parliaments could not continue to function by meeting virtually in 2021. Parliaments in other countries, including the UK, had adapted their procedures to sit in virtual and hybrid modes.”

Other examples of inadequacy were the incorrect claim that the national cabinet was exempt from the Freedom of Information Act; and the amount of discretionary power exercised by the police. She quoted University of Wollongong research that showed fines had been used as an extra form of punishment for alleged criminal behaviour by suspected drug users, young people, people with mental health issues and people in unstable housing.