Covid royal commission overdue

The latest research on excess deaths during the Covid-19 pandemic delivers a damning verdict on the efficacy of lockdowns and strengthens the case for a royal commission into how the issue was handled in Australia. According to new analysis from the OECD, Australia performed well compared with many other countries, but the fact remains we suffered more excess deaths during the pandemic than countries such as Sweden that chose not to lock down their populations but instead cautioned citizens to exercise common sense.

It is reasonable to argue that extraordinary measures were justified because of the uncertain nature of how the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes Covid-19 arose and what it would become. Yet it is responsible to ask whether decision-makers should have paid more attention to what was happening in other places, and should have been more careful in subjecting citizens to authoritarian measures and spending borrowed money that has fuelled inflation and left future generations saddled with debt. With the benefit of hindsight, it is difficult to see how the extraordinary financial and emotional toll of the heaviest aspects of government intervention was warranted. As Washington correspondent Adam Creighton reports on Thursday, top academics say data showing Sweden’s success in keeping mortality rates down brings years of civil liberty restrictions and billions of dollars in government spending in other nations into question. The OECD compared excess deaths in 2020 and 2021 – the two worst years of the pandemic – for 36 developed nations. It showed Australia had the fifth lowest increase in excess deaths but mortality was lower in Sweden, which attracted global scorn for resisting closing businesses and schools and ordering citizens to stay at home. Including excess deaths for last year as well puts Australia even further behind Sweden, with an 8.2 per cent increase across the three-year period compared with Sweden’s 3.1 per cent.

The OECD report found half of all Covid-19 deaths occurred among people aged 80 or more across 22 OECD countries with comparable data, and one-third occurred in nursing homes. According to the International Monetary Fund, Australia’s gross public debt as a share of GDP surged from 47 per cent to 59 per cent between 2019 and last year, mainly as a result of federal and state stimulus programs that accompanied lockdowns; Sweden’s public debt declined from 39 per cent to 31 per cent.

In short, the cost of the pandemic response was high and the heavy-handed nature of government intrusion arguably unwarranted. Greater effort could have been focused on those most at risk, particularly the elderly, in nursing homes and people with comorbidity, as many had argued at the time.

Three years on from the start of the pandemic, much is still to be learned. US President Joe Biden has made the responsible decision to make publicly available intelligence material on potential links between the outbreak of the pandemic and a laboratory in the Chinese city of Wuhan. “We need to get to the bottom of Covid-19’s origins … including potential links to the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” Mr Biden said. “In implementing this legislation, my administration will declassify and share as much of that information as possible.” It is also time for governments in Australia to lift mandates that still apply for vaccinations for healthy workers.

And it is time for a proper inquiry with the full powers of a royal commission to investigate the government response to Covid-19 to learn what mistakes were made and what could be done better in the future. A royal commission should examine the actions of state and federal politicians and the health bureaucrats who advised them. The inquiry should include a cost-benefit analysis of actions taken and detail how decisions were made. It must include a proper analysis of border closures, both state and national; hotel quarantine; the introduction of special laws and emergency powers and the use of police against citizens; the interruption to schooling; the introduction of vaccine mandates; and the consideration that was given to safeguarding mental health and community welfare outside of Covid-19.