Swede success

Will Australia learn from its overreaction?

One issue glossed over by Anderberg is Sweden's system of government, whereby ministers have "no powers to intervene in an agency's decisions in specific matters relating to the application of the law or the due exercise of its authority". This needs explaining to us Westminster types. The Commission of Inquiry believes it is an issue needing review. Anderberg believes that by the end of the pandemic outbreak "it was becoming increasing clear that the political measures that had been deployed against the virus (in other countries) were of limited value. But about this, no one spoke." Anderberg summed up the threat the overreaction to the pandemic poses to democracy:

From a human perspective it was easy to understand the reluctance to face the numbers from Sweden. For the inevitable conclusion must be that millions of people had lived unfreely, and millions of children had their education disrupted-all for naught. Who would want to be complicit in that? Yet the laboratories of democracy had carried out their human experiments. And the results were clear.

Will Australia learn from its overreaction, the border closures, the extended lockdowns, the inconsistent advice from state health officers, the non-evidence policy making, the politicking? Well, until we have a real Commonwealth-State royal commission as the IPA has proposed and which the Senate COVID Committee chaired by now Finance Minister Katie Gallagher, recommended last year-then we will never-ever know. The United Kingdom has initiated a major inquiry headed by a former judge with coercive powers of investigation and New Zealand last December announced a royal commission because of complaints about the way the Ardern Government handled the pandemic. All we have had in Australia at a national level is an unofficial 'inquiry' chaired by a former senior Commonwealth public servant funded by three philanthropy bodies that while producing some worthwhile findings did not have the authority to probe deeply and was easily dismissed by leaders including Victoria's Daniel Andrews.

Anderberg's book is a must read for anyone interested in how one country took a different path and was largely vindicated. The worry is that the next 'crisis' we are supposed to be facing-climate change-will be treated the same way. Overreaction, exaggeration, policy without evidence, coercive measures, and a failure to explain what the costs will be not just to the budget bottom line, but to our jobs, and our way of life.