COVID report fails in it’s primary purpose

So the Royal Commission’s final report into New Zealand’s COVID response is now public – and, as many feared, it has missed the opportunity to achieve the purpose for which it was created.

The second Commissions role wasn’t to document ‘what happened’ – it was to help a country that was deeply divided by the COVID response to heal its wounds and move forward.

In this respect, the Commissioners have completely failed.

Yes, the Inquiry acknowledges some serious failures. It notes that strategies did not adapt quickly enough, that some vaccine mandates went too far and lasted too long, and that the social and economic consequences of government decisions were not sufficiently weighed. But having recognised those failures – the report then retreats into a cautious middle ground that gives significant credit to the then Labour Government and, in doing so, completely misses the purpose for which the Commission was created.

The COVID response fractured New Zealand society. Families were divided, people lost livelihoods, loved ones were abandoned and allowed to die alone, and civil liberties were restricted in ways that most New Zealanders had never previously experienced and were more in keeping with the worlds most repressive regimes.

A Commission established in the aftermath of that period had one rare opportunity: to acknowledge clearly where the use of state power went too far and to show that those mistakes had been fully understood.

Instead, we have a report that tries to split the difference – effectively telling us that we don’t really understand what happened to us.

The consequences of this were predictable. The Minister now faces a report that justifies more than it criticises, that offers few clear conclusions, and that makes meaningful follow-up extremely difficult. Predictably, the narrative from a mainstream media which was complicit in the authoritarian overreach of the Government has portrayed the findings as a vindication of that government and of its own behaviour. Note that Jacinda Ardern and Grant Robertson were among the first voices asked for comment, and that their response was to offer carefully worded responses that avoided any culpability.

None of this enables the country to move on.

A stronger report would have been clear and direct about the failures that occurred in the exercise of draconian state power during the pandemic. That would not have changed the minds of those who supported the government’s approach, but it would have shown that the concerns of millions of New Zealanders had been heard and taken seriously.

Instead, the Commission has produced a report that ignores its primary target and adds nothing that we didn’t already know – exposing itself as a waste of the publics time and the taxpayers money.

Rather than closing the chapter on the divisions of the COVID years, it has all but ensured that those arguments will continue long after this report fades from the headlines.