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Mike's Minute: Time to get on with a Covid inquiry

Author
Mike Hosking,
Publish Date
Thu, 15 Sep 2022, 9:33am

Mike's Minute: Time to get on with a Covid inquiry

Author
Mike Hosking,
Publish Date
Thu, 15 Sep 2022, 9:33am

It is moderately encouraging we have two mutterings from the Government this week so far on the potential for a Covid inquiry.

Grant Robertson told us Monday on this show it was closer, and the Prime Minister is taking advice on what it should look like.

The reluctance to this point is fairly obvious. It's going to be ugly, and they know it.

Government's call inquiries for a couple of reasons. One, to get the subject off the front page. Two, to get a result they need or want. They do that by appointing the right people, so they can fairly confidently tell what's going to happen.

When you get the report, if you don’t like it, you review it, and release recommendations on a Friday after everyone is at the pub. If it tells you what you want, you stand at the pulpit of truth with a trumpet and enact everything.

The irony here is no one has called more inquiries and launched more working groups than this lot. Given that, just what advice is it they are seeking? Is there anyone left that isn't already involved in one?

I note also the Australians are well underway with their review into the Reserve Bank.

That's another little look this Government isn't really interested in. Once again because they know full well it's going to be ugly. But, as the Australians well understand and clearly, we don’t want to, these are large and live issues that continue to affect each and every one of us each and every day, and they will do for years.

There are gargantuan questions around the performance of both the Reserve Bank and the Government in Covid.

Lives have been up ended, learning has been interrupted, the surgery back log is a mile long, and economies have been dented severely. If that isn't worth looking into, what is?

The Australian Reserve Bank Governor, Phillip Lowe, has already said he won't quit, and indeed offered a level of defence for his actions, or lack of them.

That’s his right. The same way I assume Adrian Orr, and indeed our government, surely have an argument for doing things the way they did.

But these past couple of years, these 900 plus days are something most of us have never seen before and we pray never will again.

Was there a better and different way? You will never know until you dig and put a blowtorch on those who took our lives in their hands and asked us to trust them.

If that isn't worth a Royal Commission, nothing is.

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