Epidemiologist Tony Blakely is chair of the Covid-19 Royal Commission of Inquiry; he also provided advice to the New Zealand government during the pandemic, newly released disclosures show.
OPINION
The Public Purse is a regular Herald column focused on the public sector and how taxpayer money is spent.
Details of Tony Blakely’s involvement in the New Zealand Government’s response to the pandemic raise serious questions about the work of the Covid-19 Royal Commission of Inquiry over which he presides.
It has long been clear that Blakely, a respected epidemiologist and professor at the University of Melbourne, has a network of colleagues who were key players in advising the New Zealand Government on its Covid policies and indeed who worked deep within the government response.
But the extent of Blakely’s personal involvement, including his friendships with these players and the advice he gave them, has only now been publicly disclosed.
Under the provisions of the Official Information Act (OIA), the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) recently released Blakely’s conflicts of interest disclosure, made at the time of his appointment as chair of the inquiry in late 2022, and a further disclosure of relationships made in response to the OIA request in March.
DIA’s enquiries of 2022 included consideration of probity and interests as well as a background check. Indeed, a potential conflict related to research for the drug company Moderna was managed.
Blakely’s connection to New Zealand’s Covid response is more concerning. He reported that, during the course of the pandemic, he: “provided direct advice to key policymakers and advisors in the NZ response, including: Doctor Ashley Bloomfield, DG [director general] of Health [until] mid 2022; Sir Prof David Skegg, Chair Strategic Covid-19 Public Health Advisory Group; and many other policymakers and commentators”.
Blakely also disclosed “close collegial relationships and friendships with many of the key players in the NZ Covid-19 Policy Response, including Ashley Bloomfield, and Professors Michael Baker and Nick Wilson”.
He said that he did not believe these relationships would compromise his independence, and that “from time to time” he “respectfully disagreed with Baker and Wilson”.
The inquiry’s secretariat responded to follow-up questions put to Blakely by the Herald. It emphasised that he provided “informal advice” to Skegg and Bloomfield and “other policymakers and commentators on occasion”.
This advice, a spokesperson said, was: “provided through group email discussions, informal phone conversations, and in the case of Dr Bloomfield, phone calls on approximately three occasions”.
These details will not have come as a surprise to key ministers of the last Government -- his review of official’s advice is clearly noted in at least one Cabinet paper -- but chose to appoint him as inquiry chair anyway.
But they are certainly news to the New Zealand public. And it is particularly surprising to find that Blakely played an important role in Government decision-making which helped both to extend the life of the deeply controversial managed isolation and quarantine system (MIQ), and to end it – some of the details are scattered through official government documents released through the OIA.
In mid-November 2021, vaccination levels in New Zealand were high and the virus was spreading briskly in Auckland.
Against this backdrop, Dr Caroline McElnay, then director of public health, and Dr Ashley Bloomfield, then director-general of health, revised the “public health risk assessment” of international travellers entering New Zealand. The risk posed by these travellers had fallen.
Despite the lower risk assessment, the officials’ advice to Chris Hipkins, then Minister for Covid-19 Response, emphasised the need for careful management and warned against changing from one system to another too quickly.
Bloomfield and McElnay knew this slow end to MIQ, applied in blanket form, would be controversial and was likely to be subject to court scrutiny; after all, demand for capacity outstripped supply, and the system likely kept tens of thousands of New Zealanders from returning home, running roughshod over various fundamental (though not absolute) freedoms, protected in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. Bloomfield took the extraordinary step of seeking peer review.
”We have considered both the public health and policy implications, as well as seeking external review of the public health risk assessment from epidemiologists Professor Philp Hill and Professor Antony Blakely, who support moving away from Managed Isolation by default but note that this needs to be carefully managed,” the advice to Hipkins said.
The release of Blakely’s peer review was requested from the Ministry of Health (MoH) under the OIA in 2021; it was refused on the grounds that it constituted protected “free and frank expression of opinions” by or between or to officials or ministers. Last week, the Herald asked the ministry to reconsider releasing the review. It has not yet responded. The Herald also invited Blakely to provide the review. He did not respond directly to the request.
It is difficult to swallow the contention that Blakely provided “informal advice” to New Zealand officials and policymakers, when his peer review was cited, both in advice to Hipkins, and, additionally, in an affidavit, sworn the following month by Bloomfield, and supplied to the Wellington High Court in a judicial review of aspects of the MIQ system.
The affidavit has not been publicly released. The MoH is considering the Herald’s request for the document through the OIA process, and the High Court is still considering the request.
However, in April 2022, then Acting Prime Minister Grant Robertson referred to the peer review, and its inclusion in Bloomfield’s affidavit, in an interview with RNZ’s Morning Report: “...Ashley Bloomfield actually made an affidavit about this in one of the Grounded Kiwis court cases where he himself said that given that a decision to end MIQ would be irreversible he thought that it would be important to have that advice peer reviewed. That was done by Dr Tony Blakely and Dr Philip Hill…”
The commission secretariat told the Herald that: “at no point was Professor Blakely commissioned to provide formal advice on any aspect of the response…[and] at no time did Professor Blakely receive any payment – from the New Zealand Government or other entity – for advice he provided on the New Zealand Covid-19 response.”
If the peer review was informal, it’s alarming that it was relied upon by both Government Ministers and the High Court. What’s clear is that it was used formally, and that it helped to shape a key part of the country’s pandemic response.
The inquiry, as the terms are currently drawn, is focused on how to strengthen preparedness for future pandemics, deriving lessons from New Zealand’s Covid-19 response, and it specifically excludes examining how and when strategies and measures devised in response to the pandemic were applied.
Technically, perhaps, it is of no matter that the commission chair has already given a view on decisions, such as prolonging and ending MIQ, which ordinary folk could be forgiven for thinking sits at the heart of the subject he is now considering.
But Blakely’s involvement in the pandemic response as it unfolded is of consequence; he now chairs the country’s main exercise in sober second thought. Its terms of reference - narrow and arguably blinkered in scope - were fixed by the last Government and the current one has promised to broaden them.
But even if they were to remain unchanged, New Zealanders are still deeply divided by the momentous trade-offs made during the pandemic, when efforts to protect public health exacted a mighty cost across almost every area of life. It would be a considerable waste of time and money, not to mention opportunity, if the choice of inquiry chair exacerbated this division. And, given Blakely’s closeness to key players and events, his appointment risks exactly that.
The estimated cost for the current work is over $19m. Of that, $16.77m is the budget for the inquiry work directly, including a secretariat within the DIA of some 31 fulltime staff, and an additional $2.4m is funded separately through the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, for “all of government” co-ordination work to help public sector agencies supply information to the commission – this employs roughly six fulltimers.
Public consultation on expanding the inquiry’s remit recently closed and Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden is expected to take new parameters to Cabinet before the end of June. Additional money to fund the widened scope is expected in this month’s Budget.
It seems pointless to carry on this work – either narrowly focused or otherwise – if there are questions over the impartiality of the inquiry chair.
Van Velden may yet ask Blakely to resign; she told the Herald: “The makeup of the inquiry commissioners, as well as scope of the inquiry are decisions that I am currently considering.”
She wouldn’t specify whether she is considering going further than simply replacing commissioner Hekia Parata, who resigned from the inquiry for personal reasons in 2023.
But for the second time this year, the Herald asked van Velden if she has confidence in Blakely, and for the second time she refused to confirm that she does. The question for New Zealanders is: do we?
Kate MacNamara is a South Island-based journalist with a focus on policy, public spending and investigations. She spent a decade at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation before moving to New Zealand. She joined the Herald in 2020.
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