The findings of a federal review into the country's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted more needs to be done by all levels of governments to acknowledge the human cost of the pandemic response and ultimately restore public trust, says Australia's Human Rights Commissioner, Lorraine Finlay.
The COVID-19 Response Inquiry Report outlines nine guiding recommendations and 26 actions for change to improve Australia's preparedness and response systems to manage future public health emergencies. The Federal Government has already moved to implement one recommendation, announcing a new Australian Centre for Disease Control.
"The Inquiry is a good first step in helping to improve Australia's response to any future pandemic, but much more needs to be done to rebuild trust," said Commissioner Finlay.
"While the review concludes that Australians should be proud overall of what we achieved during the pandemic, with rates of infection, hospitalisation and death among the world's lowest in the first 18 months, we need to recognise that there was a substantial - and ongoing - human cost.
"The Report highlights the lack of transparency, fairness, compassion and proportionality in aspects of the response. This contributed to the suffering of many people; including those separated from loved ones - either by state border closures, being stranded overseas, or being unable to comfort elderly parents confined to aged care homes - and continuing impacts such as children still struggling to re-engage at school following lengthy lockdowns.
"If we only talk about Australia's 'successful' response to the pandemic, we diminish the personal toll that it took on so many Australians."
The Australian Human Rights Commission is currently developing a human rights emergency response framework that will put rights and freedoms at the heart of all future emergency and disaster responses.
To understand the impacts of the pandemic response on individual Australians, the Commission opened the 'Your Story' portal, which received more than 2300 submissions from people who shared how they were affected by COVID-19 measures. More than 3000 Australians were also surveyed as part of the project, with its findings to be released in early 2025.
"These voices need to be heard if we want to ensure that future responses are not only 'successful' in terms of public health and economic outcomes, but also in terms of fairness and compassion," Commissioner Finlay said.
"The number one lesson should be that response measures do not operate in a vacuum. The full human impact needs to be understood. We need to put human rights at the heart of all future emergency responses in Australia to ensure that this never happens again."
