My recent review of the book, Australia’s Pandemic Exceptionalism, by Steven Hamilton and Richard Holden (H&H) highlighted its ‘convincing, frank and honest account’ in just over 200 pages, and encouraged the Health Department in particular to listen to its lessons. The official COVID-19 Response Inquiry Report by Robyn Kruk, Catherine Bennett and Angela Jackson ( KB&J) may lack H&H’s punchiness but is an equally impressive document that deserves careful reading not only by Health but across the Commonwealth and the States.

KB&J were given terms of reference which precluded them from examining actions by the States that were not conducted jointly with the Commonwealth, but their views on many of those actions are pretty clear from their consideration of issues of coordination, consistency and communications. Theirs is a much more comprehensive examination than H&H’s, as indicated by its 877 pages (including 4,647 footnotes!), so its findings go well beyond those of H&H, but they encompass most of H&H’s conclusions: overall success, particularly in the early stages when the health and economic responses clearly complemented each other, but avoidable delays in achieving high levels of vaccination and failures to monitor developments adequately, leading to excessive restrictions and lack of appropriate targeting, with both financial and personal wellbeing costs.

KB&J not only provide a more comprehensive review, but differ from H&H in consciously adding hindsight to their assessments of the actions taken at the time. This is mentioned throughout the report, but the reasoning is probably most clear on page 553:

‘The panel heard that there would have been real and ongoing costs of letting perfection get in the way of providing support in a timely way. That said, this increases the value in reviewing individual measures and design features to learn what worked well and what could be improved. In particular, some decisions had unintended consequences. Leveraging the benefit of hindsight, these should be avoided in any future pandemic response.’

The more comprehensive study also highlights more of the scale of the actions taken, particularly by the Commonwealth, and the impressive agility and competence shown across so much of government. It adds weight to H&H’s general point about the importance of the administrative state and its capacity.

To an extent, this leads to less virulent criticism than H&H’s of health actions in late 2020 and 2021. KB&J, however, do not hesitate to identify, with hindsight, other shortcomings that adversely impacted on people’s physical and mental health, material wellbeing and human rights, and added to costs for taxpayers and subsequent economic instability, which better planning and preparedness might in future avoid.

A central message in the report is that planning for and response to a pandemic must take into account not just economic and health priorities but also social and equity priorities , and human rights.

The following picks up some of the issues canvassed in the report which I found of particular interest: most I agree with, some I am less supportive of, all are worth careful consideration.

Preparedness, leadership and governance

The chapters on preparedness, leadership and governance........

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