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Mike Hosking: The real Royal Commission into Covid will be in Sept 2023

Author
Mike Hosking,
Publish Date
Tue, 2 Nov 2021, 9:04AM
(Photo / Edward Swift)
(Photo / Edward Swift)

Mike Hosking: The real Royal Commission into Covid will be in Sept 2023

Author
Mike Hosking,
Publish Date
Tue, 2 Nov 2021, 9:04AM

National wants a Royal Commission into Covid.   

Well, more specifically, the Government’s lack of preparedness for Delta.   

Britian has had a review of the process. In a nutshell they started slow, finished well, the early days were a disaster but the vaccine roll out was world class.   

The Swedish are currently having a look at their response. Once again, thus far they’ve concluded they started slow but things got better.  

They are looking at their unique, no lockdown approach separately, but the current thinking is it might not have been world’s best practice.  

So, what would we find?  

The answer is easy. We were a bit slow on the lock down, but not alarmingly slow.   

So that’s a good start. The rest, sadly, has been a mess.   

From PPE gear, to testing kits, to vaccine roll outs, to MIQ, to decisions that weren’t made, borders that got breached, to the current shambles we find ourselves in.   

It’s been a trail of haphazard unprofessionalism and needless economic and social damage.  

For a brief period, we shone globally, and the Government basked in it, and that was a crime in itself. Their own arrogance led them to become dangerously complacent.  

So - a Royal Commission.  Well, what for?  

To show they’re hopeless? And score points politically?  

To hope a similar series of mistakes wouldn’t happen again?  

That would be futile. In this pandemic how many reports have already been written imploring them to take action and yet no action was taken?   

We’ve still barely rolled out saliva tests yet they were urgent, allegedly, in a report released over a year ago.  

So would a Royal Commission change anything at all?  

You can see it all now. “Mistakes were made”, the line that there was no play book for Covid.   

A few more lines like “we were world leading, we followed the science”.   

It strikes me as a waste of time and a waste of money.  

The real Royal Commission will be in September of 2023.   

We call it an election.   

The only hope this Government has, of course, is memory fade. If Covid is in the rear-view mirror by the end of next year all may be forgiven.   

But as we sit here today if a government can be voted in, in record numbers, based on Covid and the fear that surrounded it a year ago, surely their ensuing handling of the following two years will be a judgement that if executed today, they would be deeply fearful of. 

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