An independent review of Australia’s Covid response has found that 'significant mistakes were made'. Photo / Getty Images
An independent review of Australia’s Covid response has found that 'significant mistakes were made'. Photo / Getty Images
An independent review of Australia’s response to Covid-19 has found that “significant mistakes were made”, leaving vulnerable communities to bear the brunt of the pandemic.
The 97-page-review was funded by the Paul Ramsay Foundation, John and Myriam Wylie Foundation and Andrew Forrest’s Minderoo Foundation.
The panel – led by WesternSydney University chancellor Peter Shergold – acknowledged that while decisions were made under a “fog of uncertainty”, “significant mistakes” were made.
“Governments and public servants were making decisions in a fog of uncertainty,” the panel said.
“None of the panel can be confident that they would have made decisions better at the time. But looking back, we are persuaded that significant mistakes were made.
“It will be a story of being locked in overcrowded housing, job loss and missing out on government support.”
Soaring domestic violence rates increased alcohol abuse and deteriorating mental and physical health were among some of the pandemic’s worst outcomes.
The panel also blamed the exclusion of short-term casual and temporary migrant workers from JobKeeper for the current labour shortage crisis.
“We need to place vulnerable Australians at the centre of our planning,” Professor Shergold said.
The review highlights four key areas where the government should have done better.
1. Economic support should have been provided fairly and equitably
“Rules were too often formulated and enforced in ways that lacked fairness and compassion,” the panel said.
“Such overreach undermined public trust and confidence in the institutions that are vital to effective crisis response.”
The review also pointed to the unfair impact of lockdowns on children and parents, particularly mothers.
“For children and parents (particularly women), we failed to get the balance right between protecting the health and imposing long-term costs on education, mental health, the economy and workforce outcomes,” the panel said.
2. Lockdowns and border closures should have been used less
The review found lockdowns and border closures should have been a “last resort” and suggested it would have not been necessary if the policy didn’t fail in other areas.
“Too many of Australia’s lockdowns and border closures were the result of policy failures in quarantine, contact tracing, testing, disease surveillance and communicating effectively the need for preventive measures like mask wearing and social distancing,” the panel said.
The review also found that politics contributed to unnecessary lockdowns.
“Politics also played a role. Localised outbreaks were inevitable. Statewide and nationwide outbreaks were not,” the panel said.
“It was wrong to close entire school systems, particularly once new information indicated that schools were not high-transmission environments,” the panel said.
Women were found to have borne the brunt of childminding responsibilities when schools closed, taking up an extra four hours of unpaid domestic work per day.
This made women 30 per cent more likely than men to leave the workforce in the first months of the pandemic.
4. Older Australians should have been better protected
Older Australians should have been better protected, according to the review. Photo / NCA NewsWire / Jeremy Piper
The review suggests the government should have paid more attention to elderly Australians given the pre-existing problems in aged care.
“Funding was inadequate. The labour force was stretched. Fixing aged care requires changed attitudes,” the panel said.
The review said restricting aged care residents from going to the hospital when they contracted Covid was a “mistake that cost lives”, while restrictions on aged care visits past the worst of the pandemic were said to have caused “unnecessary pain and distress”.
Two hundred health experts, public servants, epidemiologists, unions, community groups, businesses and economists were consulted to formulate the review and 3000 hours were put into research, policy and data analysis.
The review panel made six recommendations for future health crises.
1 Establish an independent, data-driven Australian Centre for Disease Control and Prevention.
2 Clearly define national Cabinet roles and responsibilities in a crisis.
3 Publicly release modelling used in government decision making.
5 Sharing and linking of data between jurisdictions.
6 Establish an Office of the Evaluator General for real-time tracking of policy performance during a crisis.
The review offered six key recommendations for future health crises. Photo / NCA NewsWire / Luis Enrique Ascui
Other areas of concern included the sheer size of debt created during the pandemic, suggesting it will take 20 years to return to pre-Covid debt to GDP levels.
“Federal government net debt has risen from 19 per cent of GDP in 2019 to 28 per cent of GDP in 2022,” the panel said.
Total debt across the states and territories is almost four times as high as it was in 2019.
