Australians are owed a royal commission into the pandemic

“Yes, the Coalition had disagreed with Labor’s view that Australia was simply or blindly following the United States.

“But Simon articulated his party’s position with a certitude which was laudable. It was true leadership. In many ways, Simon Crean was destined to lead, to play a prominent role in public life.”

In opposition, Labor did its fair share of complaining during the pandemic.

It was a poignant reminder of the importance of legacy in public life. At the end of the day, that’s all you leave behind.

Crean never led Labor to an election, but he left a fine legacy. He was on the right side of history.

On the downside, Monday’s condolences were also a reminder that his own party did not help buttress that legacy by welshing on its promise to hold a royal commission into Australia’s involvement in that war, despite promising to do so when in opposition.

As opposition leader, Kevin Rudd aptly described the Iraq debacle as America’s worst foreign policy disaster since Vietnam, a war in which Australia was also complicit.

Yet upon coming to power in November 2007, Rudd never followed through on his promise to hold a royal commission, meaning Australia was the only leading advocate of a war based on ginned-up and fabricated intelligence never to have held a proper commission of inquiry.

In his memoir, Rudd accepted that his failure to follow through enabled John Howard to rewrite history and “sanitise” events.

Rudd offered a lame defence: “After becoming prime minister, I didn’t want to distract large slices of the Australian foreign, defence and intelligence community from the many real challenges we faced at the time as they were all dragged before an inquiry.

“Nor did I particularly want to hound a 70-year-old man.”

Monday also reminded us of the power of royal commissions when held for the right reasons. Two hours after Crean was eulogised by Labor, the Liberals and the Nationals, Scott Morrison hung a lantern over the robo-debt debacle once more with a tin-eared repudiation of the commission’s findings against him.

The robo-debt royal commission was warranted because it exposed wilfully negligent and appalling failures of governance that adversely affected more than 440,000 vulnerable people and resulted in at least three suicides.

Now that its work is done and, presumably, the villains named in the sealed section are being pursued, it is time for Albanese to make good on his other pre-election promise – “a royal commission or some form of inquiry, that will need to happen” into Australia’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

Either silence or garbled excuses

Thus far, there have been only similarities to Rudd’s failure to hold an inquiry into Australia’s involvement in the Iraq war – either complete radio silence or garbled excuses about how the nation is still dealing with COVID-19 and that now is not the time.

All as memories and recollections fade and the main players move on.

As for its impact on lives, livelihoods and wellbeing, nothing comes close to the misery the pandemic inflicted, a misery that was often exacerbated as state and federal governments fumbled blindly and, at times incompetently, in trying to deal with it.

A royal commission into the pandemic should not be conceived with retribution or payback in mind but with a view to how things could be done better the next time.

Such as, should unelected health officials be able to wield absolute power as they did during the pandemic, with little weight given to the economic and mental health consequences?

Or, have we done enough in the aftermath to guarantee vaccine self-sufficiency and supply chains, and could JobKeeper be better designed, so it could be implemented quickly without the waste?

And what about all the other assistance, from both the Commonwealth and the Reserve Bank of Australia, which served only to overheat the economy?

How do we better calibrate that in future?

And, does there need to be constitutional change to ensure the states and territories better coordinate their responses, rather than going off in eight different directions as they did on border closures and so forth, motivated by parochialism, while indifferent to the cruelty that resulted through people being unable to attend funerals or have their babies delivered in a nearby hospital?

Clearly, such an inquiry would be awkward for many, including the last two surviving political leaders of the pandemic – Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, who, overall, steered her state through the crisis relatively well, and Victoria’s Dan Andrews, who, compared with his seven counterparts, came stone motherless last in terms of performance.

One would hope that seeking to protect the two Labor leaders – one of whom, Palaszczuk, faces an election late next year – from any uncomfortable findings is not a reason for the government’s silence.

Labor has a proud record of royal commissions when in power. It has used them sparingly and for good cause. When last in government, it held just two – one into an equine influenza outbreak and the other into institutionalised child sexual abuse.

The former Coalition held eight in three terms, two of which were politically motivated inquiries into its predecessors and the unions. Another one, into the banks, was done only under sufferance.

In opposition, Labor did its fair share of complaining during the pandemic. The country is owed a royal commission into the COVID-19 response and Labor should not squib it, as it did on Iraq.