In late 2021, I was one of five Senators to vote in favour of making Covid vaccine mandates illegal.
I was pilloried as a murderer for not wanting to stop the spread.
This week the official government inquiry found that social trust has been destroyed by the mandates and other draconian measures adopted during Covid.
It is too late now to reverse the damage, although we could at least scrap the inexplicable continuation of mandates for some workers (like firefighters in Victoria).
As the report recognises, an open and transparent discussion of what happened is required and how we can make sure it does not happen again.
Unfortunately, the Prime Minister crippled the inquiry from the beginning.
He restricted it regarding state government policies – even though the more stringent measures were applied by the states.
Before the last election, the PM promised to have a royal commission or similar inquiry.
But he then established an inquiry with no powers to compel witnesses or give evidence under oath.
This inquiry has conducted no public hearings and so we are none the wiser about how decisions were made.
During Covid we were all subjected to the premiers’ daily press conferences while we were locked in our homes.
After Covid they’ve become very shy.
The least we could do to reestablish trust is for the PM to deliver on his promise and establish a royal commission.
The first step to rebuild trust in any relationship is to be honest with each other.
Inexplicably, the Labor government thinks we will reestablish trust by empowering the same bureaucrats that made mistakes during Covid.
They think that creating yet another government agency, a Centre for Disease Control, will somehow magically convince people to get vaccines again.
Their other plan is to silence what they call “misinformation”, even though the Covid report found that an unwillingness to accept criticism was another reason for mistrust.
Instead of blaming the people for the breakdown of our social fabric, it is about time the politicians allow for proper scrutiny of the decisions they made.
Who knows, public trust might even improve if the Prime Minister does as he promised and establishes a royal commission into the Covid response.
