Anthony Albanese\u2019s worthless inquiry into the nation\u2019s response to the COVID-19 pandemic has this week delivered a report that tells us nothing we don\u2019t already know. It validates One Nation\u2019s demand for a Royal Commission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It says human rights were \u201crestricted\u201d (read: violated). It says responses across jurisdictions were \u201cvaried\u201d and that this \u201cundermined public confidence and trust.\u201d. It says these \u201cdifferences were not easily explained, and no rationale was provided,” including \u201cunilateral\u201d state border closures that \u201clacked consistency and compassion.\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The report argues for greater transparency in future pandemic responses while noting \u201ceconomic, social, and mental health and human rights impacts were not always understood or considered\u201d in 2020. Let\u2019s say that again, with feeling: human rights were not considered<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The report\u2014more than 800 pages\u2014was critical of \u201ccontrol measures\u201d implemented by the authorities without sufficient explanation, which \u201cfed the perception that the government did not trust the public to understand or interpret the information correctly and contributed to the decrease in trust.\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The report admitted that COVID-19 vaccine mandates and other public health restrictions had the biggest negative impact on trust: \u201cThe combination of mandatory measures and the perception people had that they were unable to criticise or question decisions and policies has contributed to non-mandated vaccination rates falling to dangerously low levels.\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s nothing that One Nation wasn\u2019t saying during the pandemic itself. That was the time to implement a coordinated, consistent approach. That was the time to act to protect human rights that were being routinely violated by state and territory authorities\u2014not two years after the pandemic, but during<\/strong> the pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The report doesn\u2019t name the premiers and chief ministers who were responsible for it, all of whom have since moved on except the ACT\u2019s Andrew Barr. The report does nothing to reveal the \u2018expert\u2019 health advice that led to the lockdowns and mandates. As we said it would be, the report is essentially worthless, just like the enquiry that preceded it because it would hold no one accountable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Albanese government\u2019s response is straight out of the Labor playbook: create another agency, in this case an Australian centre for disease control, at a cost of $251 million. More unelected bureaucrats and health \u2018experts\u2019 telling us what to do, funded with yet more taxpayers\u2019 money. There\u2019s no problem that Labor doesn\u2019t think it can fix by spending even more of your money to create a new agency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Centre for disease control? Why do we get the feeling that really means \u2018centre for social and political control\u2019?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Only a comprehensive Royal Commission into the management of the pandemic will have the power to compel the information that Australians have every right to see and hold to account the authorities and state and territory leaders who gleefully trampled all over the rights they had a duty to protect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Anthony Albanese\u2019s worthless inquiry into the nation\u2019s response to the COVID-19 pandemic has this week delivered a report that tells us nothing we don\u2019t already know. It validates One Nation\u2019s demand for a Royal Commission. It says human rights were \u201crestricted\u201d (read: violated). It says responses across jurisdictions were \u201cvaried\u201d and that this \u201cundermined public … Continue reading “Pandemic report states the obvious”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aussie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29817"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29817\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29818,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29817\/revisions\/29818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}