Recently, the Australian Medical Association joined the growing number of organisations, commentors, law professors, left- and right-wing think tanks, former and current government leaders and senators who have called on the Albanese government to honour its pre-election promises and subsequent statements to appoint a royal commission into assessing Australia's response to the pandemic.
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Also, the Albanese government continues to ignore the Senate COVID inquiry dominated by Labor and Green members and chaired by Senator Katy Gallagher, now Finance Minister, which recommended that "a royal commission be established to examine Australia's response to the COVID-19 pandemic to inform preparedness for future COVID-19 waves and future pandemics".
The president of the AMA Professor Steve Robson has argued that "now is the perfect time" to hold a royal commission, as the destructive part of the pandemic is now behind us and before there are further outbreaks of COVID-19 type outbreaks that he expects "to be more regular occurrences".
Also, a royal commission should be appointed now before it get to close to the next federal election.
Appropriately, the AMA stressed it wanted the royal commission to focus on what can be learnt from the recent event to manage matters better in the future, rather than to seek to allocate blame for any aspects of handling the pandemic.
This is desirable but as the 2011 Queensland floods commission of inquiry under Catherine Holmes showed (presently chairing the robodebt royal commission), this is not always easy to achieve.
Most agree that any royal commission would need to be a joint federal-state inquiry given the important constitutional responsibilities of the states in handling many aspects of managing the pandemic. States and territories would have to pass similar letters patent to the Commonwealth's so the royal commission would have powers to probe all jurisdictions across Australia.
Certainly, there are many real issues to review regardless of Australia's general lower death rates from the COVID-19 virus and an economy that bounced back faster than many others.
These issues include: vaccine rollout; use of expert advice; constitutionality of state responses including border closures; necessity and impacts of school closures; loss of civil liberties; excessive government spending; effects on business; the efficacy of the vaccinations; the role of national cabinet; and future planning arrangements.
Commissions of inquiry into the pandemic have been held in Sweden and Norway, a major inquiry is underway in the United Kingdom and last December the Ardern New Zealand government appointed a royal commission.
Instead of holding a promised inquiry into the pandemic that is reported to have killed 20,000 Australians, the Albanese government instead rushed to appoint a royal commission into its predecessor's robodebt scheme notwithstanding issues of public administration that deserve attention in relation to that program.
The Albanese government's reluctance to appoint a royal commission might be because any inquiry would have to review what five Labor states and territories did during this period - this could be problematic given some of their questionable antics.
Of course, appointing a federal-state royal commission would be difficult to gain consensus from all eight state and territory governments and the myriad of professional and expert bodies involved in the pandemic concerning terms of reference, membership, resourcing, processes, and timeframes.
Then there is the issue about what to do with inquiry recommendations. Royal commissions are notorious for probing into unexpected areas and producing embarrassing (and costly) proposals regardless of how governments seek to control their outcomes by narrow terms of reference, specially selected members and tight reporting timeframes.
Surprisingly, the federal opposition has not been demanding an inquiry - probably fearful of what it might expose about the Morrison government. It means there has been little political pressure on the Albanese government. Their attention, too, has been elsewhere.
Just to clarify royal commissions are appointed by executive government under legislation which gives them coercive powers of investigation to call witnesses, procure files and require witnesses to answer questions even if self-incriminatory.
Since 1901 there have been 139 federal royal commissions and numerous joint federal-state ones.
- Dr Scott Prasser released in 2023 New directions in royal commissions and public inquiries: Do we need them?
