Health Department: Listen to these lessons from our COVID 19 experience
A review of Steven Hamilton and Richard Holden, Australia’s Pandemic Exceptionalism: How we crushed the curve but lost the race, UNSW Press
I started reading the latest offering by economists Hamilton and Holden on Australia’s COVID-19 experience while I was nursing a deep disappointment that the Albanese Government decided not to establish a Royal Commission into our handling of the pandemic. The scale of the pandemic and its impact seemed to me overwhelming reasons to invest in the most powerful and comprehensive of reviews.
Instead, the Government established a COVID 19 Response Inquiry led by a former Commonwealth and State bureaucrat, Robyn Kruk. Its terms of reference were quite wide, but it did not have the powers of a Royal Commission to demand documentation and witnesses to answer questions, nor did its terms of reference encompass action by the States and Territories other than that done in collaboration with the Commonwealth. Nonetheless, after just over twelve months, and just as I was finalising this article, its substantial report of over 800 pages was released. I might write a piece about Kruk’s report when I have had time to read and absorb it.
In the meantime, I must now admit that a legally oriented search for wrong doing by a Royal Commission might not have given us the clarity that economists Hamilton and Holden have provided in their highly readable account of Australia’s performance. Kruk’s inquiry might cover more, but it would be hard to better this book’s analysis and punch. In just over 200 pages, H&H have provided a convincing, frank and honest account of Australia’s ‘exceptional’ response to the pandemic, giving credit where credit is due and highlighting failures that cost lives and billions of dollars.
There are lessons in particular for the Commonwealth Health Department and Australia’s health establishment: the importance of speed of action in a pandemic, of gathering much more information to monitor the situation and to learn as a pandemic spreads, and of managing risks differently than in non-pandemic circumstances.
It is to be hoped that those free market economic commentators advocating a ‘let it rip’ response, claiming a trade-off between public health and economic objectives, also take heed. The best economic advice was entirely consistent with the best health advice. The two objectives required different but complementary policy measures (the so-called ‘Tinbergen law’ that each policy objective requires its own policy instrument) which needed to be adopted simultaneously and consistently.
There are lessons also about the capacity of the administrative state that too often is undervalued: the capacity to implement the measures needed in the timeframe such an emergency demands.
The big picture story
The big picture story told by H&H is of Australia’s overall success:
Australia’s overall performance has only been matched by a small number of countries including New Zealand and South Korea.
Economic success story
The economic success was particularly remarkable. The reasonably early (and essential) closure of our international border followed by movement restrictions kept us close to a COVID-free environment. But these measures necessitated a huge fiscal response. Treasury had learned from the 2008 GFC both what to do when faced with such a huge shock to the economy, and the need to do some things differently given the different nature of this shock. It was important to ‘go early, go big’ (to quote two of Ken Henry’s famous three GFC response priorities), but this time not to focus so much on ‘go households’........
© Pearls and Irritations
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