Immunity for Labor mates: Anthony Albanese’s Covid inquiry cop-out

Anthony Albanese’s Covid inquiry is under fire from health experts, business leaders and the Human Rights Commission after states and territories were given a free pass for draconian lockdowns.

Anthony Albanese announces the Covid inquiry on Thursday. Picture: AAP

Anthony Albanese’s Covid inquiry is under fire from health experts, business leaders and the Human Rights Commission after states and territories were given a free pass for draconian lockdowns and restrictions that crippled the economy and pushed health systems to the brink.

The Prime Minister faced immediate pushback from leading pandemic figures on Thursday after announcing a watered-down Covid inquiry led by three hand-picked independent panellists who would not have the power to compel witnesses to appear and are not required to hold public hearings.

Peter Dutton said Mr Albanese had been “rolled” by Labor premiers, including Daniel Andrews and Annastacia Palaszczuk, who oversaw the country’s most extreme pandemic lockdowns and restrictions alongside the former West Australian premier Mark McGowan.

The decision to exclude unilateral decisions made by state and territory governments, which contributed to more than 1.65 million Australians moving on to JobSeeker and schools closing for months, was slammed by the ­Coalition as a political “witch hunt” designed to blame pandemic measures on the Morrison government.

Teal independents Monique Ryan, Helen Haines and Sophie Scamps condemned the government for launching an inquiry that would not examine the actions of state governments.

Mr Albanese, who last August declared that a Covid-19 royal commission or inquiry would need to “look at the response of all governments”, on Thursday said he wouldn’t force premiers to face the inquiry. “How can we force someone to do something? How can we get conflict? It’s completely contrary to the spirit,” he said.

“At the time of the pandemic, there were three Liberal premiers in states and three Labor premiers. This should not be a source of conflict. Part of the lesson of the pandemic is that Australians need to work together.”

The Australian on Thursday revealed two of the three hand-picked panellists selected to lead the 12-month inquiry had supported Victoria’s early lockdowns.

Inquiry panel member Angela Jackson, an economist and former deputy chief of staff to Labor ­finance minister Lindsay Tanner, posted a series of tweets in 2020 and 2021 endorsing lockdowns and mask-wearing.

Epidemiologist Catherine Bennett – appointed to the inquiry panel led by retired public servant boss Robyn Kruk – had also publicly backed Melbourne’s lockdowns before softening her position over concerns that extreme restrictions would become less effective in combating Covid-19.

Human Rights Commissioner Lorraine Finlay welcomed the probe but attacked the Albanese government’s terms of reference for “not having a specific focus on human rights impacts and for excluding the unilateral actions of state and territory governments”.

“Lockdowns, border closures, school closures, mask mandates and many other aspects were the domain of state and territory governments and to not examine these as part of the inquiry means it will be harder for us to improve our response for future pandemics,” Ms Finlay said.

The Opposition Leader called on Mr Albanese to elevate the inquiry to a royal commission that would have the power to compel witnesses, saying the exclusion of state decisions from the investi­gation “didn’t make any sense”.

“It’s clear here that the Prime Minister is putting the interests of Daniel Andrews and Annastacia Palaszczuk ahead of the interests of the Australian people. And that is a very dangerous act for a prime minister to undertake,” he said.

Mr Andrews said: “I think everyone regrets having to go through a one-in-a-100-year pandemic where people lost their lives.”

The Andrews government’s quarantine hotel bungles sparked a 112-day lockdown and contributed to 800 deaths. In total, Victor­ians endured 262 days in lockdown across 2020 and 2021.

Ms Palaszczuk said Queensland’s Covid response was the “envy of the world”. Her government stopped people accessing healthcare and visiting dying relatives, shut schools, closed pubs and spent $200m on the Wellcamp quarantine facility that housed a handful of people.

WA Premier Roger Cook, health minister during the pandemic, said the state had ­already completed a whole-of-government review and was taking immediate action. The McGowan government closed the WA border for the ­majority of the pandemic, shutting out family and friends.

Australian Medical Association president Steve Robson said carving out the actions of the states meant the inquiry would ­operate with “one hand tied behind its back”.

Professor Robson said the government must expand the scope of the inquiry because impacts on healthcare workers related to state and territory public hospitals.

Australian Industry Group chief executive Innes Willox said excluding unilateral state actions from the inquiry was “a major oversight, to say the least”.

“We need a better understanding of the impacts on communities and business of some of the longest and most damaging lockdowns in the world, and of the unilateral and damaging actions of states to lock down everything from buildings and suburbs to entire states,” Mr Willox said.

The inquiry, launched by Mr Albanese and Health Minister Mark Butler in Adelaide, will review the Morrison government’s response to the pandemic and report back by September next year on how to improve future pandemic responses. The independent panel will decide whether to hold public hearings. The terms of reference stated the inquiry would adopt a “whole-of-government view” and consider vaccines, supply of medical equipment, support for industry and business, and international policies.

About 20 reviews into Covid-19 have already been conducted by state and territory governments, with the federal inquiry to take in all findings. Along with the appointment of the three independent panellists, a taskforce will be set up within the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet to support the inquiry.

Professor Bennett said the inquiry would allow for all existing Covid reviews to be “pulled together”. “We can’t move on without pausing and taking the time to learn from this experience. You can have perfect plans in place, but they may not play out as you expect in an actual pandemic,” Professor Bennett told Sky News.

“States are actually at varying stages of doing their own reviews. So it’s not necessarily appropriate to reproduce that or to duplicate work. But it is important to consider how it all worked nationally.”

Addressing her pandemic tweets, Dr Jackson said the lockdowns were a time of “significant stress” and noted there were hard trade-offs between personal liberties that were lost during the pandemic and the health and economic consequences.

Dr Jackson said the scope of the inquiry would investigate preparedness before Covid-19 struck: “The pandemic was a once-in-100-years event; we had preparations beforehand. How did they hold up, how did the processes of government work? They are the questions we will be asking.”

Former NSW premier Dominic Perrottet said “I believe it’s important to understand what decisions we got right and what would be done differently, in case our country has to face something similar in the future”.

Additional reporting: Natasha Robinson, Lydia Lynch, Paul Garvey, Alexi Demetriadi, Angelica Snowden