Australia’s first COVID-19 review calls on social sector to play bigger role

The first independent investigation into Australia’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic calls for an apolitical, trusted voice on public health.

The first independent review of Australia’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic is calling for the establishment of an expert body and trusted voice on public health, and for the social sector to contribute more broadly in the planning and practice for the next health crisis.

The recently-released ‘Fault lines: An independent review into Australia’s response to COVID-19’ recommends Australia create a world-leading Australian Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (ACDCP) that is independent and apolitical, and critically has access to data from all jurisdictions.

The centre should act as an early warning system to future health crises and function as the key advisory body to the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee (AHPPC), which is the decision-making committee for health emergencies composed of all state and territory Chief Health Officers and chaired by the Australian Chief Medical Officer.

Additionally, the review signals a critical need for lived experience to be integrated into ongoing health crisis planning, advising that a panel of multidisciplinary experts, including business leaders and frontline community workers, be established to improve government decision-making.

Doing so, the review argues, would ensure that the advice presented to the national cabinet during health crises incorporates the broadest range of health, economic, social and cultural considerations and guarantees greater transparency, openness and public sector trust.

Review panel chair Peter Shergold AC said the results demonstrate that while the nation was relatively successful in its early response, ultimately pandemic planning proved to be inadequate.

“We think that an apolitical centre, together with much greater engagement with civil society organisations is crucial in terms of preparing for the future,” he told Pro Bono News.

“In spite of many government public services, talking the language of citizen engagement, human-centred design and place-based approaches, it was clear to us that on the whole, governments did not do a good job at making sure that organisations and particularly, not-for-profits at the front line, were able to contribute to the design of our approach, or indeed to how it was delivered and communications. Too often, that came too late.

“The other thing we learned is how public health experts are more credible and influential with the public than politicians. That is why politicians always turn to public health officials. The difficulty was there was not sufficient transparency. We didn’t know the basis on which decisions were being made or changed. So our view is we need to do this much better.”

Shergold, who is also chancellor of Western Sydney University and the Centre of Social Impact’s chair of the board, said that if the social sector does not take a larger and more influential role in the next health crises, our nation will “repeat its mistakes”.

“Unless we actually start to work with civil society organisations, then we will repeat our most egregious faults, which was not recognising and addressing upfront, right at the very start, the likely consequences of a pandemic on vulnerable groups.

“There is tremendous expertise that sits at the community level in how to address the needs of the vulnerable, how to work better with their strengths, how to deliver services, how to communicate to particular community groups.

“One of the things that is very clear to me in this report is that not-for-profit organisations didn’t believe they were consulted by public servants. Instead, they were advised, they were told what was going to happen, so their front-line practical expertise often got wasted, at least initially. We need to make sure that doesn’t happen again.

“Our view is the social sector has got to play a key role in those preparations for the next pandemic and it needs to be actively engaged and involved in the decisions that go to governments.”

The review took approximately five months to complete and is entirely independent of the government, instead funded by a philanthropic partnership between the Paul Ramsay Foundation, Minderoo Foundation and John and Myriam Wylie Foundation.

Over 350 people, including health experts, public servants, economists, business groups and community organisations, were consulted for the review in a confidential process that enabled respondents, some of whom are very senior in their fields, to make open and honest statements.

Shergold argued that both the confidentiality as well as the “innovative” use of philanthropy positions the review as a powerful contributor to public debate.

“It is quite a different way for philanthropists to spend money by asking an independent group to assess public policy. It means that people reading this report and its recommendations know that it is written with complete apolitical intent, it is not dependent on government money and it is not constrained by government terms of reference. It is genuinely independent.

“For philanthropists to contribute this is a very important step forward, and I am hopeful that other organisations will continue to fund this way in the future.”

In total, the review identified four key policy areas where Australia should have performed better, highlighted five overarching lessons, and provided six recommendations to improve the response to the next health crisis.

Not-for-profit economic research institute e61 Institute supported the panel which was led by Shergold, and also included Jillian Broadbent AC, Isobel Marshall, and Peter Varghese AO.