Australia needs a royal commission into the Covid response and should consider new laws to crack down on medical misinformation, the Senate’s Covid committee has recommended.
In its final report, released on Thursday, the Labor-chaired committee called for greater transparency, including releasing decisions of Australia’s health advisers and the secretive national Covid commission, which called for a gas-led economic recovery.
The report found that although “Australia fared much better than other countries” in the first wave of the pandemic, “significant failures” had caused “catastrophic consequences” including more than 6,000 deaths, about 30% in aged care.
“This failure to establish stand-alone quarantine facilities resulted in overseas arrival caps being imposed, which severely restricted the number of people able to return to Australia, denying thousands of citizens entry to their own country,” it said.
The vaccine rollout “was plagued by the failure to secure enough supply and significant delays which led to every target the government set itself being missed”.
“The government has also failed to address the serious and dangerous vaccine misinformation promoted within the government’s own parliamentary ranks.”
The committee called for the establishment of a Centre for Disease Control and for the federal government to intervene in the aged care work value case in support of pay rises in the sector – which are both Labor policies.
It called for a review of the Therapeutic Goods Administration’s powers “to address health misinformation during public health campaigns or emergency responses”.
The committee called for all national Covid commission reports to be made public, including “all declarations of actual and perceived conflicts of interest made by commissioners”; and “all previous and future minutes of the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee”.
It suggested a “royal commission be established to examine Australia’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic”, in line with calls started by independent senator Rex Patrick and supported by a number of Labor, crossbench and even Coalition senators.
Katy Gallagher, the committee’s chair, told reporters in Canberra the royal commission was warranted because the committee had been “prevented” from accessing crucial information. That included national cabinet documents, which the Morrison government claims are cabinet in confidence.
Gallagher did not commit Labor, if elected, to setting up a Covid royal commission, noting the Senate report was not opposition policy.
When asked about the former Liberal prime minister Tony Abbott’s call for a royal commission in August, Morrison said he would not be “drawn into those things” because “we’re managing the pandemic right now, and this pandemic still has quite a long way to go”.
“So I’m sure at some time in the future there’ll be a time to talk about those reviews or whatever form they might take,” he said.
On Thursday Gallagher said that Australia was “unprepared” for the pandemic and the federal government “didn’t jump at taking responsibility”.
She cited the Morrison government’s failures on “quarantine and vaccines”, which had caused “flow-on consequences”.
“We think some of the failures have lengthened the lockdowns, we’ve had significant outbreaks as a result – obviously more cases, and unfortunately more deaths.”
In a dissenting report, the Coalition senators said the Australian government had “delivered one of the lowest rates of loss of life and one of the strongest economic recoveries in the world”.
Although it started as a bipartisan initiative, Coalition senators said the committee had become “a vehicle in which Labor senators have pursued partisan attacks on the government”.
There had been a “remarkably high degree of government cooperation with this committee”, they said.
