Australia’s pandemic inquiry doesn’t pass the pub test. Here’s why you should care

Reminding us of what Australia did not have, a federal-state national royal commission into all nation's total responses to the pandemic, is the just released second report by the United Kingdom's COVID-19 Inquiry on "core UK decision-making and political governance".

It is scathing of the UK's initial handling of the pandemic and the "toxic and chaotic culture" of Boris Johnson's Conservative government that delayed taking key actions on lockdowns, miscommunicated information about the pandemic and did not take into account a wider range of expert views. Notwithstanding the UK's better pandemic performance compared to some other countries, the Hallett Inquiry believes government nevertheless "failed their citizens"

Former prime ministers of Australia, Scott Morrison, left, and the UK, Boris Johnson, middle and current Australian PM Anthony Albanese. Pictures Gary Ramage, Shutterstock, ACM

Armed with statutory coercive powers of investigation, the UK's COVID-19 Inquiry chaired by Baroness Heather Hallett, a retired British judge, has wide terms of reference to review all of the UK's - including Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland - preparedness, decision-making arrangements and impacts of the pandemic.

It is in stark contrast to the Albanese government's non-statutory COVID-19 Response Inquiry.

Instead of the promised royal commission, the Australian inquiry had no powers of investigation or to protect witnesses wanting to give evidence. Moreover, its terms of reference precluded it from reviewing "actions taken unilaterally by state and territory governments". In our federal system, they took many of the controversial actions on lockdowns, border closures, civil liberties and school closures. Many decisions were made on the basis of limited evidence and the states often acted in contradiction to agreements made at the National Cabinet.

Some saw the delay by the Albanese government in appointing the COVID-19 Response Inquiry till September 2023 - sixteen months after it was elected - and its limited terms of reference as a deliberate tactic to focus attention on the Morrison government and to avoid any review of the five Labor states and territories in office during the pandemic.

The long delay allowed the Victorian ALP Andrews government, facing an election in November 2022, to avoid any independent scrutiny of its much-criticised actions.

To its credit the Australian COVID-!9 Response Inquiry ignored the constraints of its narrow terms of reference and gave attention to several of these issues and even praised some of the Morrison government's actions, but critics argued it should have gone further and deeper.

The Hallett Inquiry acknowledged the "quicker and cheaper" expert inquiries run by Australia and Nordic countries but noted their lack of "legal processes with the force of law" to "compel the production of evidence or the giving of sworn testimony by political and administrative leaders."

Consequently, argued Hallett, those inquiries "do not have anything like the same scope and depth" as the UK's inquiry which was "the right and only appropriate vehicle for an inquiry considering a national crisis of such scale and intensity."

Further, the Hallett Inquiry is a long-term review extending over several years and promising to release seven more reports in addition to the two completed, that will cover the healthcare system, vaccines and therapeutics, procurement, the care sector, testing and tracing arrangements, impacts on the young, and the economic response.

The purpose of all inquiries held after calamitous events, whether natural disasters such as floods or bushfires or some accident, is only partly about clarifying the facts about what happened and allocating responsibility about who did what. More importantly, as the Hallett Inquiry says, given that another pandemic can be expected, it is essential that there is a full understanding of what went wrong so that remedial action can be taken to ensure that next time matters will be handled more effectively and openly.

This is in line with the Senate COVID inquiry chaired by Labor senator Katy Gallagher, now Finance Minister. It recommended in April 2022 on the eve of the federal election that a "royal commission be established to examine Australia's response to the COVID-19 pandemic to inform preparedness for future COVID-19 waves and future pandemics".

While the UK has a powerful, ongoing, national, independent inquiry chaired by a former judge into the pandemic, Australia has fluffed its chance to do likewise. Our federal system has been used as an excuse, but this has primarily been motivated by short term partisan politics.