No regrets: Peter Gutwein stands by his leadership decisions during Covid pandemic

With the release of a new book on Covid, former Premier Peter Gutwein talks about the lows during the pandemic.

Tasmanian Premier Peter Gutwein. Picture: Linda Higginson

Peter Gutwein cut a lonely figure as he wandered the dark streets of Hobart for hours with the enormity of Covid decisions weighing on his mind.

In an exclusive interview with the Sunday Tasmanian from Indonesia, ahead of the launch of a new book on the pandemic, he said he often would be up at 4am walking from North Hobart to Sandy Bay before heading to his office.

“It was mainly after large decisions,” Mr Gutwein said.

“I well remember when we made the decision to close the Burnie hospital and we finished briefings around 11pmon Easter Saturday (and) I was to announce that the next morning and I went and walked for a couple of hours and just got my head straight.

“Many mornings I had discussions with Hobart City Council workers that were doing the early morning garbo runs.

“Over a number of weeks, in fact months at that time we became well known to each other,

“In fact, it was quite unusual for a garbage truck not to pull up and stop and for the driver and whoever was with them to have a quick chat with me.”

Mr Gutwein said he was well aware that every decision in relation to Covid impacted people’s lives, including weddings that had been planned for years and also funerals.

Royal Australian Air Force and Tasmanian Health Pharmacists replenish stores in the North West Regional Hospital in Burnie Tasmania.

Co-author of Life As We Knew It, Aisha Dow describes Mr Gutwein’s interview for the book as “very candid”.

Ms Dow said he responded quickly on WhatsApp to a request for an interview where interviews with some premiers and chief health officers “had taken many weeks or months to secure” with some demanding a list of potential questions.

In the book he opens up about telling the family of a teenaged son who died that his brother could not travel from interstate for his funeral.

“Obviously they were devastated ….it was relayed to me that his mother felt that she was losing her second son, because he couldn’t come home to the funeral”, he says in the book.

Mr Gutwein also explains in the book how he collapsed from overwork in the car park at 15 Murray St.

Australian Army soldiers, from No. 26 Transport Squadron.

He told the Sunday Tasmanian, that in hindsight, he would have better communicated the re-opening of the borders in December 2021.

“The only thing that I would do differently would have been towards the end of 2021, when we were planning to open up, would have been (to have) provided more information at that time to get people ready for what was going to occur when case numbers started to mount,

“Hindsight is a wonderful tool but at the time, we felt that we provided sufficient information and that people were understanding that there would be an increase in cases and because most people were vaccinated, the level of serious illness was not going to occur.

“When I think about that period, post-Christmas and across the New Year, and then early into January, people were really quite frightened just by the increasing numbers of cases.

“Perhaps more communication could have been provided through late November and December.”

Mr Gutwein has no regrets about re-opening on December 15 – “it had to be done.”

“The advice we had at the time was if you’re going to open the borders and coronavirus was going to impact it was far better to do it over the summer months when it’s warmer rather than hold off and wait and then try to do it when we’re heading into the changing seasons, it would have been worse.”

The chapter on Tasmania in the book is headed “Tasmania’s moat” about Mr Gutwein’s decision to close Tasmania’s borders which was backed by Labor and the Greens``.

“While the prime minister may not have been a fan of the decision, the front page of Hobart’s daily newspaper, The Mercury, the following morning gave a strong indication of where local sentiment lay,” the authors wrote.

“Set against a map of Tasmania, with a gloomy dark-blue ocean around it, was the headline: ‘We’ve got a moat, and we’re not afraid to use it.”

Originally published as No regrets: Peter Gutwein stands by his leadership decisions during Covid pandemic