Australia’s Largest Christian News Site

Anthony Albanese has announced a Covid inquiry that will expressly ignore the decisions of state and territory governments.

The inquiry into Australia’s response to Covid-19, announced on Thursday by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, will explicitly exclude “actions taken unilaterally by state and territory governments”, according to its own terms of reference.

Mr Albanese’s announcement has invited accusations from the opposition that his government is running a “protection racket” for Covid-era state leaders, the majority of whom led Labor governments.

“In the absence of the states and territories being compelled to participate it looks like nothing more than a protection racket for the state premiers,” Opposition Health spokeswoman Senator Anne Ruston said.

The only two pre-pandemic premiers still in power — Victoria’s Daniel Andrews and Annastacia Palaszczuk of Queensland — were among the most notorious for their human rights abuses, and both represent the Labor Party.

Nationals senator Bridget McKenzie has likewise said there was “no doubt in my mind” Mr Albanese’s decision to hold an inquiry — rather than a royal commission that comes with stronger investigative powers — was aimed at protecting Labor premiers.

Ahead of the 2022 election, Mr Albanese had promised “a royal commission or some form of inquiry”. Many had interpreted a royal commission as a Labor election promise: a month before the election, a Labor-dominated parliamentary committee recommended “a royal commission be established to examine Australia’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic”.

Unlike royal commissions, the inquiry announced by Mr Albanese this week will not have the power to compel witnesses to attend, will not force witnesses to provide truthful evidence, and will not have judicial oversight.

Further Criticism of Albanese’s Covid Inquiry

Senators Ruston and McKenzie were joined by other Coalition figures in expressing reservations about an inquiry with such a limited scope.

Earlier this week, the Australian Financial Review reported that former Prime Minister Scott Morrison would only support an inquiry if it also probed the states and territories.

“Any serious retrospective inquiry that seeks to go back over this ground would be obsolete if it did not require equal attention and involvement of all state and territory governments who shared in Australia’s response to this one-in-a-100-year event,” he said.

Also commenting earlier this week was Nick Coatsworth, appointed by the Morrison government as deputy chief medical officer at the height of the pandemic. He said, “there does need to be significant scrutiny on the states and territories because ultimately their polices were the ones that were most restrictive”.

On learning of the inquiry’s terms of reference Thursday, Coatsworth voiced his disapproval, writing on X (formerly Twitter) that “actions taken unilaterally by state and territory governments” — which the inquiry would ignore — is “pretty much everything they did”.

Why a Robust Covid Inquiry is Essential

Australia was unique among Western nations in the condemnation it received for how authorities treated their citizens in the Covid era.

By late 2021, media outlets of every political stripe were calling attention to the human rights abuses endured by Australians.

‘When Will Someone Hold Human-Rights Hearings on Australia?’ the National Review asked. ‘Melbourne Police Fire Large Projectiles, Pepper Balls at Protesters on 3rd Day of Demonstrations’, reported the Epoch Times. Even the staunchly progressive Atlantic mourned that ‘Australia Traded Away Too Much Liberty’.

Protesters gathered in New York, chanting, “Save Australia!” as they marched from Brooklyn to the Australian consulate in Manhattan.

Four Polish MPs gave speeches outside the Australian embassy in Warsaw. “What is happening in Australia cannot be called democratic,” warned KoLiber MP Jakub Kulesza, who led the protest. “Australian police oppress, harass and attack peaceful citizens depriving them of their fundamental freedoms.”

What Albanese’s Covid Inquiry Will Ignore

Under the Albanese inquiry, Australians will never learn what “science” was used to justify decisions — mostly state-based — to shut down businesses, national parks, houses of worship and even children’s playgrounds in pursuit of the pipe dream of Zero Covid.

The inquiry will ignore the damage done by state and territory-enforced lockdowns, which “led to plunging life satisfaction, poor mental health and loneliness” beyond any impacts they had on “case numbers and pandemic deaths” — as discovered by ANU researchers and reported by the Australian Financial Review.

The inquiry will turn a blind eye to the years of lost learning and the terrible toll on children’s mental health thanks to school closures.

Left untouched by the inquiry will be the psychological damage done by state and territory health officers with their daily case counts, fear-filled rhetoric, and ever-changing edicts.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews will never be held to account for plunging the city of Melbourne into six lockdowns totalling 262 days, stretching from March 2020 to October 2021. Victoria Police will never answer for showering Victorians with rubber bullets and pepper spray, even after allowing — and kneeling for — politically convenient Black Lives Matter protests.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk will never be held to account for barring her state’s own residents from returning home — or for using secret taxpayer-funded polling of people’s “sentiments” on Covid to formulate her pandemic policy.

Former Western Australian Premier Mark McGowan will never be held to account for turning his state into the last Zero Covid holdout on the planet, which even included preventing vaccine-free parents from visiting their sick children in hospital.

Former Northern Territory chief minister Michael Gunner will never be held to account for his unhinged “stuff-it-shove-it” rant in which he demeaned anyone even questioning vaccine mandates as “absolutely anti-vax”.

Under the inquiry, no state leader will be held accountable for separating Australians from their loved ones at deathbeds, funerals, births and weddings. Nor will they ever have to answer for depriving citizens of the freedom of movement, assembly, religion or the right to work — and then trading those freedoms back piecemeal in exchange for medical compliance.

Public Consultation and Final Report Date

Perhaps the one redeeming feature of the inquiry is that key stakeholders and members of the community will be invited to share their views as part of a public consultation.

The inquiry will be led by and independent panel comprising former senior bureaucrat Robyn Kruk, epidemiologist Catherine Bennett and health economist Angela Jackson.

The inquiry will deliver its final report by September 30, 2024.

Image via Unsplash.