The Labor Government has voted down a bill to establish a Covid Commission of Inquiry, which would have essentially the same powers and independence as a Royal Commission.
The bill was supported by a small coalition of senators who have been vocal critics of Australia’s pandemic response but was rejected by the Labor in a vote on Thursday.
“Australia’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic left thousands of people out of work, separated from loved ones and some people died, or are maimed for life, from a rushed vaccine rollout,” said Liberal Senator Matt Canavan, who introduced the bill.
“Perhaps the next most disheartening thing to our response, is to the response to the response.
“Those Australians hurt during COVID deserve to have the accountability of proper public hearings, the publication of all the health advice and an open, transparent attempt to recognise mistakes as well as put in processes to prevent such things ever happening again.”
The bill was co-sponsored by Senators Malcolm Roberts, Alex Antic, Gerard Rennick, Ralph Babet and Matt O’Sullivan.
Australia has had plenty of Covid inquiries, but none with Royal Commission powers or similar, as was promised by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese before Labor took government.
“I support looking at it through a measure like a Royal Commission,” he said two weeks before the election. “We haven’t finalised what the structure would be.
“We need to examine it, we need to make sure that we learn the lessons which are there because this is a once-in-a-century impact.”
However, the Albanese Government’s federal Covid inquiry will not come close to a Royal Commission in scope or powers. The inquiry excludes all state and territory measures – including lockdowns, school closures, vaccine mandates and border closures – leading some to call the inquiry ‘toothless.’
In Parliament on Thursday, Greens Senator Jordon Steele-John said that his party still supports the establishment of a “frank” and “transparent” inquiry with the powers of a Royal Commission. Nevertheless, the Greens abstained from the vote.
Only ten senators from the Opposition and One Nation, along with independent David Pocock, voted in support of a Covid Commission of Inquiry.
Canberra Daily is told by the office of one of the senators who sponsored this bill that this is not the end of the matter, and that they will keep pursuing the establishment of an inquiry with Royal Commission powers.
Previously, Senator Babet brought five separate motions before the Senate agreed to establish the world’s first government Excess Mortality Inquiry, which is now in progress.
An inquiry into proposed terms of reference for a Covid Royal Commission has already been conducted, which will prove helpful in the event that either a Royal Commission or a Commission of Inquiry into Australia’s Covid response are eventually established.
Nonetheless, such efforts will face stiff opposition from the Albanese Government, if Labor Senator Tim Ayres’ speech in Parliament today is representative of his party’s position.
In speaking time before the vote, Senator Ayres said that the Labor Government did not support the bill because “there is already an inquiry,” before launching into an ad hominem diatribe against the senators who proposed the bill.
Senator Ayres used the term ‘conspiracy theories’ or ‘conspiracy theorist’ more than twenty times, likened the efforts of senators to establish a thorough Covid inquiry to movements motivated by “antisemitism,” and called these same senators “cranks,” and the “nastiest, extreme, kooky elements of politics.”
Senator Rennick called Senator Ayres’ speech “disgusting,” stating, “all we’re recommending today and supporting is that we have a thorough inquiry.”
Senator Rennick also criticised the “sheer and utter hypocrisy” of Labor, highlighting that a Senate Select Committee on Covid led by Labor Senator Katy Gallagher and including other senior Labor members recommended the establishment of a Covid Royal Commission when Labor was in opposition, in 2022.
“And yet today, when we have tried to move a bill that the Labor Party themselves supported… we just copped some of the most outrageous accusations,” said Senator Rennick.
After the vote, Senator Canavan said, “Why can’t the Government accept that if it is given immense power to lock people in their homes and force people out of work, that there should be an equal and corresponding obligation for them to be accountable to the people hurt by their decisions?”
Senator Babet took to X to express his dissatisfaction with the outcome, calling the decision of the Senate “weak.”
“Is it too much for Australians to ask for governments and the bureaucrats advising them to be held to account for the advice and actions they took during the pandemic?”
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