Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced a year-long inquiry into our response to the COVID-19 pandemic, although it won’t be a royal commission. It will call on state premiers to give evidence about “how they worked together”, but will not have the scope to investigate any of the major decisions they took individually.
This, apparently, is a “deep” inquiry, per Health Minister Mark Butler. Former prime minister Scott Morrison told The Australian Financial Review he would cooperate only if the inquiry looked at state and federal leaders.
“Any serious retrospective inquiry that seeks to go back over this ground would be obsolete if it did not require equal attention and involvement of all state and territory governments who shared in Australia’s response to this one-in-a-100-year event,” he said.
It’s rare you compose a straight, declarative sentence that you’re fairly sure has never been published in the history of your publication, but here goes: Scott Morrison is absolutely right.
Those surreal early years of the COVID-19 pandemic are not so distant that we have forgotten the unprecedented heights of power and prominence to which it hoisted state premiers. They made hugely consequential individual decisions regarding the management of the pandemic. This happens to be particularly true in states held by Labor.
The current model would have us believe the following is worth no further scrutiny.
Victoria
Failures in the management of Victoria’s hotel quarantine program led to 99% of the infections in the state’s devastating second wave in early 2020, according to the Coate report. There were 18,000 infections and 768 deaths, many of them of a nature — alone, separated from loved ones — that is impossible to truly contemplate.
The Coate report found no adequate accountability in this process. No-one, to pick one example, from Premier Daniel Andrews down, could recall deciding to spend millions on the private security that led to so many avoidable infections.
Additionally, the scope of the inquiry will mean there is no further scrutiny of the decision-making that led to the sudden mid-year lockdown of public housing towers in Flemington and North Melbourne, when busloads of police showed up to surround the homes of largely migrant and working-class people.
The Victorian ombudsman found this was “not based on direct health advice and violated Victorian human rights laws”, and in May this year, the Victorian government settled a class action from those affected.
Nor will the inquiry look at the raiding of a pregnant Ballarat woman’s home and her handcuffing over a Facebook post.
Between March 2020 and October 2021, Melbourne spent a total of 262 days in lockdown, across six stints.
Queensland
“I do not want under-40s to get AstraZeneca,” Queensland’s then-chief health officer Jeannette Young told a press conference in June 2021. “I don’t want an 18-year-old in Queensland dying from a clotting illness.”
A slickly produced video clipping up Young’s statements was posted on Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s Facebook and Instagram accounts, complete with subtitles in case you were scrolling past on mute.
“Even the UK government won’t allow their under-40s to get the AstraZeneca vaccine. This is not the time to risk the safety of our young Australians,” the video was captioned.
Anti-vaxxers, in a move you could see coming from space, jumped on the news.
Under Palaszczuk’s oversight, Queensland consistently had the highest vaccine hesitancy in the country. This was not helped by her own delay in accepting a shot of AstraZeneca. The messaging from Young remained the same in August, even while children under 10 were being taken to hospital with infections.
It might be worthwhile interrogating whether there was any political calculus involved in Palaszczuk’s decision to highlight these comments, damaging as they were to then-prime minister Scott Morrison’s attempts to get his sputtering vaccine rollout back on track, and whether there was any assessment made of the risks in encouraging vaccine hesitancy.
Further, no-one has ever taken responsibility for health officials incorrectly blaming a young man for spreading COVID in March 2021.
The rest
It is not merely partisan. Any serious accounting of how COVID was managed and what can be learnt for future pandemics needs to look at, for example, how New South Wales went from a “gold standard” to being seemingly unprepared for a savage outbreak of the Delta variant in the space of one month in mid-2021.
On account of what looks like a concerted effort to protect Labor premiers from any more embarrassing revelations, while grubbily inflicting more pain on Scott Morrison — now a backbencher, most likely soon to be gone from Parliament altogether, and not exactly short of political pain and embarrassment in the last year — we are denied that.
What have we missed? Let us know any other major state decision that a meaningful inquiry should look into by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
And presumably go back to look at that ‘gold standard’ ‘handling’ of the Ruby Princess – this time with those federal authorities involved at the time (Quarantine and Border Farce) compelled to face questions : rather than the way they were pulled out of the NSW enquiry?
The two-tone ‘isolation/ostracism(?)’ of Sydney (east : west)?
“On account of what looks like ….”? “…NSW …. gold standard…”? …. Should that be “Ruby standard”?
[Presumably Colbeck and Hunt (“letz-vax-a-deal”?) will be expected to front, with Morrison?]
…. Chant’s reticence to follow Hazzard’s fulsome praise, at Shredder’s political wake (almost 2 years ago)?
Which authority was responsible for whisking those ‘2(?)’ individuals – with ‘highly suspicious symptoms’ – away from the ‘back dock’ of the Ruby Princess – in all that precautionary protective gear? As the feds waved through the rest of the passengers ‘out front’?
April 29 2021 – Rob Delane’s federal Inspector-General of Biosecurity’s report (ABC Aug 24 2021) – a report that catalogued years of problems within DAWE (Dept of Ag; Water and Environment – “including a 2018 internal audit of biosecurity for arriving ships that was largely not acted upon” – in a department that was staffed by committed officers, but inadequately resourced) – that Ag Minister Littleproud then tried passing the buck to NSW Health.
And those federal officers withheld from the NSW Walker RC – with details not available to Walker at the time of his enquiry.
“The ship’s master was not interviewed, nor were the vessel’s medical logs inspected”?
Agree and would not trust the motives of the former PM or LNP when they follow the tactics of the US GOP especially Senate ‘Freedom Caucus’ under the guidance of the Conservative Christian CNP (Koch Donors’ Network); described by McCain as ‘lemmings in suicide vests’.
Like counterparts in the UK, Canada and Oz, ppose everything, avoid responsibility; take ethical, moral and empathy bypasses, promote climate and Covid science denial (with ‘wellness’ anti-Vaxxers in background) then blame centre right through left while demanding commissions, inquiries, investigation, witch hunts etc., to ultimately with RW MSM assistance, denigrate anything centrist and enlightened.
Wouldn’t it be pretty tricky to have the kind of inquiry that is needed if the states oppose it? The one thing all premiers (of whatever stripe) agre on is “states rights”.
I’d love to see a proper investigation as to why only the poorer parts of Sydney were locked down, when Covid came roaring back via Bondi. (And of course the Ruby Princess scandal).
Isn’t the reason the States got involved is because the LNP federal government didn’t take on the quarantine role that was their responsibility in the first place?
The piece-meal (state-by-state/developing) approach was a product of Morrison’s reticence to get involved with anything that might blow up in his face – after that hose, he didn’t want to hold, when caught wearing an Aloha shirt.
….. “I don’t hold the petard”?
I reckon that Morrison federal Coalition government abdication/vacating of uniform national quarantine oversight responsibility – to throw that hail Mary pass to ill-prepared states – sits at the root of all that unravelling.
And of course Morrison wouldn’t want anyone looking into that – so why not this excuse, not to play?
Too right. “Quarantine” is (supposed to be) a federal responsibility – for obvious (continuity/blanket) reasons.
…. We saw what the dung-hill/empire-building states did with railway gauges, when left to their own devices.
I agree. I think an important reason for excluding decisions by the States was to get the inquiry underway, without waiting to get all the States to agree.
I call bullshit on some of this. I want to know why the infection control advisors sat on their arse and pretended that it didn’t spread by aerosol when it clearly did. This was the major reason behind Victoria’s quarantine outbreak rather than any security guard and the refusal to consider spread via common aircon ducting. It is all very well for Morrison and Dutton. The states did nearly all the work, they did all the quarantine and copped all the criticism from Scummo et al, except the LNP states of course. The biggest buggerup in NSW apart from the pussy footing around Bondi, was the utterly idiotic removal of all restricitions just for Christmas by Domicron Perrottet who caused massive infections and considerable loss of life.
The whole country’s still pretending COVID isn’t spread by aerosol, OGB- that’s why sweet FA’s been done to address ventilation and we’ve still got the equivalent of a teaching hospital’s worth of beds tied up with COVID cases all the bloody time.
Finding someone to blame isn’t going to be useful, finding a better way to do it next time, and there’s going to be a next time, would be useful.
Didn’t the Andrews government contract out the hotel security to good ol’ Private Enterprise? The mob we’ve been told for decades now can handle things much better.
Glad’ll be glad about this state of affairs too.