The COVID‑19 pandemic required rapid, decisive and resilient leadership to deliver an effective national response. The Australian public looked to the nation’s leaders to work with a unity of purpose in the face of uncertainty and fear, having witnessed how other countries were grappling with COVID‑19. While never substituting for the importance of the individuals in leadership positions, well‑developed governance structures can support good leadership – particularly through a protracted crisis such as a pandemic.

The Inquiry considers that the decisive and difficult decisions taken by the Prime Minister and other Australian Government ministers at the outset of the pandemic demonstrated courageous leadership and actions consistent with the precautionary principle. The rapid response leaders implemented protected Australian lives in the first wave and set us on a path that reduced the overall negative impacts of the pandemic. Decisions included closing the international border, agreeing a national lockdown and moving to support jobs through a nationwide wage subsidy scheme. The Prime Minister quickly identified key weaknesses – including the operation of Commonwealth–state relationships through the Council of Australian Governments and the lack of established relationships between government, business and unions – and sought to rectify them through establishing new structures.

Courageous leadership also involves humility from our leaders to identify when something has not worked or we need to change course. Key failures through the pandemic, including the devastating aged care outbreaks in Victoria in 2020 and the stalled vaccine rollout, were themselves partly caused by failures in leadership at all levels. However, the Prime Minister acted decisively to address these failings, moving to establish the Victorian Aged Care Response Centre and making key changes to the leadership of Australia’s vaccine rollout.

National Cabinet

National Cabinet was established to enable Australia’s nine First Ministers to work collectively in delivering a national response. Replacing pre-existing structures that had become ‘fossilised’, led by the Prime Minister, it was an action‑oriented body that set key national directions that played a significant role in Australia’s broadly successful COVID‑19 response. The forum capitalised on the merits of a federated model of government, acknowledging that much of the capability, expertise and workforce crucial to the pandemic response lay with state and territory governments. Over the course of the pandemic, it made many decisions critical to the nation’s COVID‑19 response, including on social gathering restrictions and hotel quarantine requirements.

However, there were challenges in the operation of National Cabinet. Key amongst them was that the unity of purpose demonstrated during the initial phases of the pandemic waned as the emergency continued, and trust between leaders eroded. Attempts by the Prime Minister to bring state leaders together to agree a reopening plan failed mid‑pandemic, and this led to varied approaches being implemented across state and territory governments.

This contributed to Australians’ sense of a lack of consensus between leaders and led to questioning of the validity of supporting evidence at a time when trust in Australia’s leaders, as well as in the science behind COVID‑19, was critical. Pre-planning could have mitigated such failures.

National Cabinet’s structure also meant that broader health and non‑health impacts were not consistently given the appropriate level of consideration. Instead, selected public health advice was the primary input to decision‑making. While appropriate during the alert phase, as the crisis went on and leaders were variously looking to incorporate broader health, social and economic considerations, this approach undermined collective decision‑making. As a result, we heard that the outcomes of some decisions created unnecessary hardship for Australians and missed opportunities to protect those most affected by the pandemic.

Federal Cabinet

Under the Biosecurity Act, the Minister for Health is given extraordinary powers to operate independently and without Cabinet oversight; however, federal Cabinet continued to operate during the pandemic with its established decision‑making structures. Early in the pandemic, there were concerns about the extent of the powers vested in the Minister for Health and what would occur if he became unwell, and the Prime Minister was sworn in as Minister for Health. While the Prime Minister never exercised powers vested in the position of Health Minister during the pandemic, this action, alongside the Prime Minister also being sworn into four other portfolios during the pandemic, was judged in an independent inquiry as undermining public confidence in government.²¹

Federal Cabinet processes were adapted and expanded to suit the circumstances. The National Security Committee (NSC) of Cabinet effectively played the role of ‘emergency Cabinet’ and met frequently (as often as twice a day) to problem solve and make decisions. Overall, there were more meetings of Cabinet and its subcommittees than in any year since the end of the Second World War.

Membership of the NSC included the Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister, Treasurer, Minister for Defence, Attorney‑General, Minister for Foreign Affairs and Minister for Home Affairs. The Minister for Health was co‑opted to attend all NSC meetings related to health. The NSC was supported by the Secretaries Committee on National Security, which met regularly and mirrored the NSC agenda.

Unlike those of other Cabinet committees, NSC decisions did not require the endorsement of the full Cabinet, meaning they could be taken straight to National Cabinet or announced publicly. Using the NSC also brought senior public servants to the same table as ministers, which supported rapid decision‑making. While serving a necessary function, there was concern that the use of the NSC created a bias towards a national security lens in a protracted health‑driven, whole‑of‑society emergency. In particular, the NSC structure meant ministers and departmental Secretaries who were key to the response, such as from the Department of Social Services and Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources, were not always at the table. Including a wider range of ministers and departmental Secretaries would have benefited decision‑making and the coordination of the response across government.

The Australian Parliament

Sending an important and reassuring signal to the public was the continued operation of the Australian Parliament throughout the pandemic. The Department of Parliamentary Services had a pandemic plan and was able to pivot its operations to facilitate the participation of parliamentarians. This was not the case for all state and territory parliaments.

Members of Parliament were provided with the opportunity to ask questions of the government through Parliament’s Question Time. The Senate Select Committee on COVID‑19, which was established in April 2020 to inquire into the Australian Government’s response to COVID‑19, operated through the pandemic, delivering its final report in April 2022.

During the pandemic, Parliament passed approximately 15 Bills per month, including significant emergency legislation to support implementation of the national response, such as Bills for appropriation of funds. Some parliamentary committees, such as the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights and the Scrutiny of Bills Committee, continued to meet remotely to ensure parliamentary scrutiny.

The Australian Public Service

The Australian Public Service provided Australia’s leaders with the support needed to deliver a whole-of-government response to COVID‑19. High-level forums, such as the Secretaries Board, COVID‑19 Deputies Group and Commonwealth-State First Deputies Group, coordinated approaches, made decisions and shared information in pursuit of this outcome. Whole departments, including Finance, Health and Aged Care, Home Affairs, Prime Minister and Cabinet and the Treasury, took on leadership roles to develop and implement response measures.

However, the pandemic response and broader whole‑of‑government emergency management and resilience arrangements, such as the Australian Government Crisis Management Framework, were not fully integrated. The lack of integrated emergency management governance structures contributed to key departments, including the Department of Health, becoming overwhelmed at points during the pandemic response.

In addition to this, the public service relied heavily on key people to deliver its response, leading to burnout and fatigue as the pandemic progressed. There were other disadvantages, including an inability to efficiently and effectively adopt a holistic approach to decision‑making that balanced public health considerations with other factors and the overall underutilisation of resources and expertise across government.