Cook says WA COVID response vindicated as review heaps praise on government
By Hamish Hastie
West Australian Premier Roger Cook says his government has been vindicated after an eight-month, behind-closed-doors review of its response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The review by former Liberal health minister and dentist John Day, Emeritus Professor Margaret Seares, and former deputy of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, Michael Schaper, was tabled in parliament on Wednesday.
WA Premier Roger Cook.Credit: Trevor Collens
The panel heaped praise on the government and its agencies for the state’s response while presenting 35 recommendations to the government to better prepare it for future pandemics, which it said were likely to happen again.
“We want to leave a guidebook, a blueprint so no state in the future will have to confront what we did, which is a clean slate, no guidebook, no experience of dealing with a global pandemic,” Cook said.
“We want to learn from those experiences and make sure that if it happens in the future, and the likelihood is that it will that we are fit for purpose and ready to go.”
One key recommendation was for the government to combat vaccine misinformation and disinformation that spread like wildfire as the government embarked on its mandatory vaccine rollout.
Cook said as part of its response to the review the government will develop a vaccine campaign ahead of the 2024 flu season to counter misinformation and reverse vaccination trends, particularly in children.
Opposition health spokeswoman Libby Mettam said the report was a missed opportunity that focused on areas where the government could “pat itself on the back”.
“What is clear is that they were only interested in further praise about the COVID response,” she said.
“Given our heavy reliance on overseas health workers, there may have been some learnings that we could have taken forward about recruitment and better supporting our health workforce.
“There were issues with RAT test procurement. There were challenges with the G2G pass, Safe WA act and a number of opportunities to look beyond just what worked well.”
The review was first flagged in October last year, at the same time former premier Mark McGowan announced the end of WA’s long-running state of emergency.
At the time, McGowan said its terms of reference were broad enough for the reviewers to look at all aspects of the pandemic response, from the controversial G2G border pass system to the housing stimulus packages.
“Basically, the entire response by the Western Australian government is up for review,” McGowan said.
However, the report stated it was not a forensic deep dive into the response, but rather sought to “focus on what worked well and what could be done better in the future”.
The panel received 900 submissions, including many from aggrieved family members who were locked out of the state or kept from visiting dying loved ones.
The D’Argent family, who blamed the hard border as the cause of their daughter Robyn’s suicide after she was denied entry to her home state twice during the pandemic, made submissions to the review.
At the time the review was announced, Alain D’Argent told Nine News Perth he wanted the G2G pass system scrutinised.
“There’s something that definitely needs to be done with the G2G, and it’s cost a lot of lives,” he said after the review was announced.
The panel acknowledged that the COVID-19 response was “challenging” but avoided casting any judgement on the operations of the hard border or G2G program.
“There is no doubt it was a challenging time for many across the state,” it said.
Cook said he acknowledged some of the decisions made during the pandemic impacted people negatively but backed the decisions as some taken to protect the wider community.
“This is the key defining role of the government that government governs in the interests of all Western Australians,” he said.
Millions in COVID quarantine bills unpaid
On the same day the COVID review was tabled in parliament, an auditor-general’s report on the WA government’s hotel quarantine program run during COVID-19 was also made public.
That report found the two-year program hastily devised to isolate people entering WA for a fortnight cost taxpayers $475.5 million. Of that, $212 million was paid for security alone.
The government is owed $9.1 million as 8 per cent of the 86,000 quarantine guests had still not paid their bills.
Auditor-General Caroline Spencer also revealed the hotels involved in the program had so far claimed at least $9.4 million in damages from guests including “excessive wear and tear to furniture and fittings, replacement of carpets and flooring, missing or stolen small electrical appliances, repairs to bathrooms and damage from guests smoking in rooms”.
Spencer was largely complementary about how the program was run but criticised record-keeping, particularly around damage claims.
Crisis support is available from Lifeline on 13 11 14.
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