The leaders who oversaw Australia’s COVID-19 pandemic response do not need to apologise to rebuild deeply eroded public trust, Health Minister Mark Butler said. Source: ABC News.
An independent inquiry into the response warned trust had been diminished for a range of reasons including heavy-handed restrictions, vaccine mandates and inconsistent state and territory responses, making people unlikely to accept other harsh measures in any future pandemic.
Appearing on the ABC’s AM program, Mr Butler was asked if leaders who oversaw prolonged lockdowns should apologise to the public to gain back trust.
Instead, he pointed to the report-backed creation of a Centre for Disease Control, which the Government has committed $251 million to establish.
Monitoring disease outbreaks, alerting the public and collaborating with state and federal governments are all duties the new CDC will take up.
“No, our contribution to rebuilding trust is going to be to put in place a Centre for Disease Control,” he said.
“I have enormous respect for all of the leaders who led our pandemic response …. they worked enormously hard, they made some incredibly courageous decisions.
“I think the key takeaway from this report is that our leaders did not have the tools that they needed, there were not the pandemic plans in place when this thing hit.”
Former deputy chief medical officer Nick Coatsworth, who was part of the response “apparatus,” said health authorities had sought to strike a challenging balance in their approach to stemming the impact of COVID.
“The problem was that we almost followed the health advice, our health advice to a fault, in a way,” he told the ABC.
“There were trade-offs between controlling this virus and minimising the effect that it had on our elderly Australians, in particular those in nursing homes, and then the effects of the restrictions which were disproportionately felt by younger Australians.”
He said the report provided a blueprint for future pandemics.
“I do think we would have to have a very dire situation for us ever to implement vaccine mandates again,” he said.
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Leaders don’t need to apologise for Australia’s response to COVID-19 pandemic, health minister says (By Stephanie Dalzell, ABC News)
