Why did Labor shoot down Ralph Babet's COVID inquiry bill?

Last December the New Zealand Ardern government appointed a royal commission to assess what happened and to plan for future pandemics. It has yet to report.

Australia, it seems, is unable or unwilling, to appoint a national, independent inquiry despite promises from our leaders.

To date, all Australia as had was last year's privately funded Shergold review.

While it highlighted numerous problems, it lacked the powers and imprimatur of a royal commission to probe deeply or to speak authoritatively. Consequently, it was easily ignored by most governments with the Victorian Premier reportedly dismissing it as a report "written by a bunch of academics".

Surely, we can do better than the backflips we saw in the Senate last week.

Surely, we owe it to the thousands of Australians who died during the pandemic to review what happened and why.

Surely, for future generations we should learn from the mistakes that occurred to be better prepared next time.

Australia may have had one of the lowest pandemic death rates in the world, and our economy has bounced back quickly, but many concerns remain like: vaccine rollouts; inconsistent state responses; impacts of national and state border closures, lockdowns and school closures; suspension of parliamentary sittings; loss of civil liberties; lack of scientific basis of some responses; and the confused role of the national cabinet.

There are two impediments to Australia having a royal commission.

One is our federal system. Given the importance of the states during the pandemic any review needs to be a joint federal-state royal commission. There are many precedents for such joint inquiries, but the complexity of the issues and the vested interests at stake, would pose some challenges in securing agreement across nine governments about any inquiry's terms of reference, membership, and timeframes.

Second, there is, as usual, politics. The Albanese government's reluctance to appoint a royal commission might be because five Labor states and territories held office during the pandemic and they might be criticised by an independent review for some of their actions. After all, those governments are all still in office.

Also, a royal commission might even find that the now much-blamed Morrison government handled, under the circumstances, some aspects of the pandemic well.