OPINION
“Never hold an inquiry unless you know the outcome in advance,” as the saying goes. Anthony Albanese has barely announced his “Covid inquiry”, and we already know what the outcome will be.
A whitewash, courtesy of a broken election promise.
In January 2022, Albanese promised a royal commission into the nation’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.
But then, he also promised to lower household electricity bills by $275 a year. Instead, electricity bills have nearly tripled, and Albanese has chickened out of a royal commission.
An inquiry is set to be announced into the state, territory and federal governments’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Health Minister Mark Butler will announce the inquiry in Adelaide this morning.
The inquiry will not have the same powers as a royal commission but will be able to call witnesses and examine the response of federal, state and territory governments during the pandemic.
ABC Australia
That, too, is a lie.
In fact:
Unilateral decisions taken by states and territories have been officially carved out of the Covid-19 inquiry, according to terms of reference released by the government on Thursday morning.
In other words, every one of the most hated pandemic policies — lockdowns, forced vaccinations, arrests and fines for simply being out of doors — will be whitewashed away. The wholesale rounding up of Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory won’t be held to scrutiny. Border closures that led directly to unnecessary deaths will be totally ignored.
Victoria’s disastrous hotel quarantine debacle, by far responsible for more death and misery than any other single policy will be deliberately swept under the carpet.
The scope of the inquiry, detailed on the Prime Minister and Cabinet website, include the vaccination program, broader health supports for people affected by Covid-19, international policies to support Australians at home and abroad and financial supports provided to individuals.
But mandatory vaccinations were the decisions of individual states, so the grossest violations of the Nuremberg Code in Australian history will be whitewashed away.
Liberal Senator Hollie Hughes says the Covid-19 inquiry “looks like a protection racket” for Premiers Daniel Andrews and Annastasia Palaszczuk due to Anthony Albanese’s election promise of a Royal Commission into Covid-19 not being fulfilled.
“If you’re someone in Melbourne I think you’re probably a bit upset this morning – after having gone through the world’s longest lockdown – that there will be no compulsion on anything in Victorian government,” Senator Hughes said on Sky News.
“And then if you’re up in Tweed (Heads), I mean, where those bollards were stopping those people in the middle of Tweed going from the NSW to Queensland side, you know, those families that were kept apart, babies that weren’t able to be seen when they were rushed to hospital over border towns – this is insanity.”
Senator Hughes acknowledged that there were valuable lessons from the pandemic worth reviewing.
Yes, indeed: whatever the state politicians did, do the opposite.
Peter Dutton is calling out Albanese’s obvious chicanery.
Mr Dutton agrees the Covid-19 inquiry is a “protection racket” for Daniel Andrews and Annastacia Palaszczuk and will not correctly examine the pandemic.
“If there’s nothing to hide here, then why not let the sun shine? I think the Prime Minister has made a deliberate decision to put the interests of Labor premiers ahead of our national interest and that is a shameful act from a Prime Minister who has been elected by the Australian people to provide support and to lead the whole nation,” the Opposition Leader said.
“I think most people will be quite stunned to understand that premiers who were responsible for lockdowns, the very significant number of deaths in Victoria, the mental health issues that still linger today in Victoria and elsewhere, are as a result of Daniel Andrews’ decisions – and he would be excluded from consideration in this inquiry.
“I think Australians are smart enough to smell a rat here.”
The Australian
Of course, they can smell a rat: the pesky rodents are running amok in Victoria’s hospitals.