PM’s pandemic response too slow: Greens and Labor

Labor and the Greens have accused Scott Morrison of a slow pandemic response, a reluctance to embrace social-distancing measures and being dragged into taking stronger action.

Scott Morrison ‘confused the public with messages suggesting that things could carry on as normal’, according to a Labor and Greens-dominated Senate committee. Picture: Gary Ramage

Labor and the Greens have accused Scott Morrison of a slow response to the COVID-19 pandemic, a reluctance to embrace social-distancing measures and being dragged into taking stronger action by state governments.

A Labor and Greens-dominated Senate committee examining Australia’s response to the coronavirus unveiled its interim report late on Wednesday, arguing the Prime Minister “appeared reluctant to fully embrace social distancing measures”.

It also warned that Mr Morrison “confused the public with messages suggesting that things could carry on as normal.”

The report savaged the government over its handling of the aged-care sector, arguing it failed to prepare nursing homes or anticipate “crippling staff shortages” and a “high volume of requests for personal protective equipment”.

“The Prime Minister also created confusion and splintered federal co-operation by criticising state and territory decisions to close schools and impose domestic border restrictions,” it found.

Labor and Greens senators argued that the Morrison government should permanently raise the rate of JobSeeker, release the minutes of this year’s national cabinet meetings and establish an Australian Centre for Disease Control to improve pandemic preparedness.

On tabling the interim report, Labor Senator Katy Gallagher said the government had been “too slow” to respond, but the states and territories had pushed the Prime Minister.

“On the health response, the short summary is thank goodness for the states,” she said. “It was the states who took the big brave decisions at the right time and forced the hand of a federal government, who was resisting pressure to take strong action.”

Senator Gallagher said one of the government’s major failings had been its aged-care response with nearly 700 nursing home residents dying during the pandemic.

“The Australian government failed to accept full responsibility for the aged-care crisis, despite being the primary source of funding and the principal regulator of the sector,” the report says. “The crisis had catastrophic consequences for many elderly Australians and their families.”

However, Coalition senators in their dissenting report said the health and wellbeing of aged and disability care residents had been considered in the deliberations of the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee throughout the pandemic.

The 242-page report takes aim at the government’s pandemic planning arrangements, declaring it should have responded to COVID-19 with greater urgency when reports of a mysterious virus started to emerge.

“Australia’s planning for a pandemic had assumed an influenza type virus. This left us unprepared when that wasn’t the case. The Australian government’s initial COVID-19 response plan adopted in February contained key gaps, including failures to contemplate the closure of international borders, and the neglect of the aged care and disability sectors.”

However, Coalition senators said they did not agree that Australia was underprepared to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“While it is to be expected that different conclusions will be drawn from different philosophical perspectives and genuine disagreement is unremarkable, gratuitous partisanship and point scoring is not constructive,” the Coalition Senators said.

“In the most serious global pandemic in a century, it would be unreasonable to expect perfection in the response by any government. A better test is how governments adapt to rapidly changing circumstances in an evolving environment.”

Senator Gallagher told the Upper House 39,000 Australians remained stranded overseas with 8000 of those people classified as vulnerable.

She said the economic impact of the pandemic had been severe with 2.4 million people out of work or working less hours than they needed with unemployment forecasts to remain above pre pandemic levels for the next three years.

“For millions of Australians 2020 has been the most difficult in years and we should not underestimate the ongoing challenges that many of these Australians face, and will continue to face as we recover from the pandemic,” she said.

The report is scathing of the government’s $5.24m COVIDSafe app, which it says “has significantly underdelivered” on Mr Morrison’s promise that it would ensure the opening-up of the economy in a COVID-Safe manner.

“The app was launched with significant performance issues and has only been of limited effectiveness in its primary function of contact-tracing,” the interim report says.

Also questioned is the timeliness in which the Morrison government secured vaccine deals, declaring more needs to be done to “catch up” to other developed nations.

The committee said it does not accept claims the Morrison government was unable to anticipate the situation which occurred at St Basil’s Home for the Aged and other Victorian aged care facilities, as first reported by The Australian.

It also suggests the commonwealth failed to learn from earlier outbreaks at aged care facilities in NSW, particularly in relation to surge staffing capacity, personal protective equipment and infection control.

Senator Gallagher said the committee, which has held 37 hearings in 2020, heard hundreds of hours of evidence from ministers, government officials, stakeholders, individuals and experts.