Australia’s COVID-19 inquiry: Will it shine a light, or keep us in the dark?

On 21 September, the federal government announced there would be an inquiry into “Commonwealth responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, but excluding ‘actions taken unilaterally by state and territory governments’”. This long-awaited announcement is disappointing in many respects.

At a press conference announcing the decision, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the inquiry would be led by three eminent individuals – health economist Angela Jackson, epidemiologist Catherine Bennett, and public administration expert Robert Kruk—who will have 12 months to report their findings.

Prime Minister Albanese also said this is “an independent inquiry”, and that members will “run their own show”, which presumably means they can decide the kinds of evidence they’ll draw on, and the weight they’ll give to the different factors that have potentially shaped responses.

As critics have rightly noted, the failure to include unilateral decisions by state and territory governments is a major shortcoming of the inquiry, since these decisions included lockdowns, border and school closures, mask mandates, and other restrictions that have massively impacted people’s lives.

Moreover, the inquiry doesn’t have the powers of a royal commission, which has scope to call witnesses under oath, hold public hearings, and compel evidence. What, then, will it do?

As reported, the inquiry will “particularly focus on” health measures, including:

• COVID-19 vaccinations and treatments
• medical supplies and public health messaging
• public health supports for those impacted by COVID-19 and lockdowns, such as mental health and suicide prevention
• financial support for individuals, industry and business
• assistance for Australians abroad
• governance mechanisms.

The government has also indicated it “will consider the findings of previous relevant inquiries and reviews, and identify knowledge gaps for further investigation”.

Given its remit and membership – comprising a small group of professionals with narrow expertise (two in the health field) – the inquiry is unlikely to break new ground, and has met fierce opposition even before starting its work.

As Prime Minister Albanese explained at his press conference, there have been 20 inquiries on the COVID-19 pandemic to date. These include an independent review, published in October 2022 (chaired by Peter Shergold) and the Senate Select Committee on COVID-19, which tabled its report in April 2022.

The Shergold Inquiry identified “four areas where we should have done better” – namely, “economic supports should have been provided fairly and equitably”, the use of “lockdowns and border closures should have been used less”, “schools should have stayed open”, and “older Australians should have been better protected”.

The Senate committee called for a royal commission‘to inform preparedness for future COVID-19 waves and future pandemics”, and offered many other recommendations.

I would make a couple of points about public inquiries in general, and the proposed inquiry in particular.

Firstly, Australia, like many other countries, has a long history of public inquiries on issues of public concern, including natural disasters, institutional responses to child sexual abuse, and aged care quality and safety, to name a few.

Inquiries are “mechanisms of lesson learning” that follow prominent failures, and the evidence is that the findings tend to be shelved for various reasons, including their lack of fit with the political realities of the time, and the failure to consider the capacity to deliver them at the local level.

In 12 months’ time, when the COVID-19 inquiry report is released, other pressing issues will likely take priority – including an upcoming federal election. Let’s hope this inquiry is different in terms of providing recommendations that help improve future pandemic preparedness, but experience of inquiries on other matters doesn’t instil confidence.

Secondly, this inquiry is limited not only by its exclusion of the unilateral decisions of states and territories, but also its failure to consider “international programs and activities assisting foreign governments”.

This latter point has received no media coverage but is a significant oversight, since Australian policymakers often looked to international evidence and examples when proposing measures.

Early media coverage of deaths in the US and Italy, for instance, undoubtedly played a role early in the pandemic in the decision to introduce harsh lockdowns.

Pandemics are, by definition, widespread (typically global) epidemics of infectious disease. Consequently, it’s not surprising that responses designed to stem transmissions will disrupt economies and societies in many ways.

For example, the impacts on global supply chains and labour shortages are directly related to national pandemic measures, which have contributed to inflation, which central banks have responded to by raising interest rates, which has then negatively impacted standards of living. These cascading impacts of the pandemic are a common feature of crisis events, as sociologist Sylvia Walby has noted.

Countries have responded in different ways to COVID-19, including the use of measures such as lockdowns, border closures and mandated masks, and Australia can learn much from analysing these responses.

Lockdowns have been contentious in different countries, and they were eschewed in some, such as Sweden.

In proposing measures, health authorities tended to rely on models that employed assumptions that often proved to be wrong.

Will this inquiry critically examine the role of modelling in pandemic responses?

One member of the panel, Catherine Bennett, is an epidemiologist, and hopefully she’ll be open to shining a light on the role of her own discipline in shaping responses that in some cases arguably caused more harm than good.

Many epidemiologists and public health scientists in fact opposed lockdowns and other restrictions due to concerns about “the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies”.

One of the challenges confronting policymakers during COVID-19 was the so-called infodemic – namely, the rapid social media-driven spread of alleged misinformation and rumours – which was evident from the outset of the pandemic.

This public health event was the first to occur in the age of social media and widespread applications of artificial intelligence (AI). Both public understandings of, and official responses to, COVID-19 have been mediated by digital technologies and AI. Will the inquiry examine this issue in the light of international evidence?

I have doubts the inquiry will investigate such matters, since one of the shortcomings of pandemic responses internationally was the narrowing of the policy options resulting from heavy reliance on certain kinds of expertise, especially infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists, who are wedded to risk-management approaches, and the use of modelling and technological responses to what are mostly complex socio-political issues.

These experts were lauded for their wisdom, calmness, and measured advice. But they have a trained incapacity to attend to issues outside their field of expertise, and their perspectives and approaches created many “blind spots”.

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This includes recognition of the complexities of human behaviour in a declared public health emergency, such as resistance to measures that restrict freedoms and involve a loss of jobs or livelihood, and the unintended consequences of measures that have created or reinforced inequalities.

As I argue in my forthcoming book, the framing of the pandemic as a “crisis” at the outset has had profound implications for the nature of the responses, which sometimes generated resistance to measures such as lockdowns and vaccinations.

The World Health Organisation’s declaration of a public health emergency in March 2020 created what Giorgio Agamben calls “a state of exception”, which accords authorities exceptional powers and restricts citizens’ rights – in this case, the right of unimpeded movement and to conduct one’s everyday activities.

The inquiry will need to consider these bigger issues if it’s to develop recommendations to guide future pandemic preparedness.

Three years on from the start of the pandemic, there’s now considerable evidence of the socioeconomic and health impacts of the responses, especially lockdowns.

These include increases in inequalities (see reports by Oxfam and the World Bank), and in incidences of domestic violence, self-reported loneliness and mental illnesses, delayed medical diagnoses and treatments, and increased online-based harms and abuse.

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The longer-term implications of pandemic policies are immeasurable, and the full extent will not be known for many years. Measured in terms of intergenerational burden alone, the impacts of the coronavirus response have been huge.

As I note in my book, many claims have been made about lives saved and illnesses prevented by the implementation of lockdowns and other measures, but these have generally been made by experts, policymakers, and other actors with a stake in those decisions.

Retrospective accounts are prone to (re)interpretation as vested interests seek to justify decisions made, and to bring history into line with current views and practices and future visions.

The benefits of various measures, such as lockdowns and mass testing and mass vaccination, have been justified and questioned with reference to “science”, but the latter has been found wanting in addressing many questions and uncertainties raised by the rapidly evolving pandemic.

Fundamental assumptions about, and approaches to, governance, and specifically “risk governance”, were brought into question by the pandemic.

On the other hand, COVID-19 has revealed the significance of uncertainty in shaping responses – about the virus, the disease, paths of transmission, and other matters.

Yet, both planning for, and responding to, pandemics have been shaped by a logic of risk management which presumes a calculable, controllable future, which fails to address uncertainty as well as ignorance.

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Read more: COVID-19 and the tolerance of uncertainty: Teaching our frontline healthcare workers how to cope

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Embracing incertitude in disease preparedness, Leach, et al. have argued, demands that social, political, and cultural dimensions are made central in policies.

This includes recognition that diseases such as COVID-19 evolve in unpredictable ways, and have unknown, longer-term implications, and that the responses to both the disease itself and to interventions will also be variable, being shaped by factors such as the priorities of, and local knowledge and beliefs of, those subject to interventions, and historical trust or distrust in authorities regarding their ability to act in the best interests of citizens.

As the World Health Organisation’s Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, noted in May this year, when he announced that the pandemic was officially over:

“COVID-19 has exposed and exacerbated political fault lines, within and between nations [and] has eroded trust between people, governments and institutions, fuelled by a torrent of mis- and disinformation.”

He also noted that the pandemic:

“… has laid bare the searing inequalities of our world, with the poorest and most vulnerable communities the hardest hit, and the last to receive access to vaccines and other tools.”

Will Australia’s COVID-19 inquiry consider these critical big picture issues? Or is this expecting too much?

I would like to remain optimistic about the potential of the COVID-19 inquiry to shine a light on the government’s pandemic responses, so that one can have confidence in future pandemic planning and preparedness measures. However, this inquiry does not inspire optimism.

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If societies are to meet the challenges posed by what has been described as the “pandemic age”, serious thought will need to be given to understanding the character and broad impacts of pandemics in the 21st century.

An inquiry, if wide-ranging and in-depth (including evidence from diverse sources, including impacted communities, such as the aged care sector) has the potential to improve future responses to pandemics. However, if we fail to learn the lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic, Australia will be ill-prepared to meet the challenges posed by similar events in the future.