Amid the conspiracy theorists, some hard truths about public trust in government and the medical sector came to light.
Restoration in public trust is the biggest reason to have a covid Royal Commission, according to witnesses at today’s Senate hearing into the RC’s terms of references.
“If you look at any measure of trust in Australia … [you can see that] in the two or three years since the major covid crisis has passed, [trust is disintegrating],” said Chris Stanford, from Civil Liberties Australia.
Mr Stanford quoted the 2023 Edelman Trust Barometer.
“Sixty-one percent of Australians now say that lack of civility and mutual respect is the worst I’ve ever seen,” he said.
“More than half of Australians say their default tendency is to distrust everything until they see evidence of the fact that it’s trustworthy. Sixty-one percent of Australians say that people are incapable of having constructive and civil debate about issues that they disagree on; 24% of Australians would help someone who strongly disagreed with them, or their point of view, and they were in need.
“And only 21% of Australians would be prepared to live in the neighbourhood of someone who strongly disagreed with them, or their point of view.
“The result of that is that 48% of Australians now see government as unethical and incompetent. Media has been reduced to an echo chamber for 57% of Australians.
“Lack of trust polarises, and that just makes it harder for government to do their job in discussing and making big decisions that require trust across the whole of the electorate.”
Lorraine Finlay, the Human Rights Commissioner, said restoring trust was crucial to restoring that public trust.
“A Royal Commission would not only help regain trust by allowing us to acknowledge both the good and the bad in terms of what happened [during the covid pandemic], but also allow Australia to see that measures are being taken to improve our responses in the future,” she told the committee.
“The only other thing I’d add is, I think another benefit in terms of developing trust and results from a Royal Commission.
“It [would give] the entire Australian community a better understanding of how our fellow Australians were affected, because I think we did become, in many respects, a very divided country.
“We’re very different in impacts arising from the restrictions, and [a Royal Commission] is a real opportunity for Australia to get a better understanding of how their neighbours, and how people right around the country, were impacted by the response measures.”
Ms Finlay warned that there was a real danger in “normalising” emergency responses.
“We need to recognise that decision-making in emergencies is different,” she told the committee.
“Once the emergency is over, the need for a comprehensive review to analyse the decisions that were made, and to make sure there’s proper planning to be better prepared for the next emergency, is critically important.
“The second thing is to ensure that things put in place for the emergency don’t become normalised and part of your regular decision-making process.”
The committee also heard from an organisation called People’s Terms of Reference, led by Mr Julian Gillispie, who, when asked by Greens Senator David Shoebridge if he acknowledged the enormous public health benefits of vaccines for measles, flu and polio, said that he believed the polio vaccine had been responsible for a rise in paediatric cancers.