Phase two of the Royal Commission into the Covid-19 response will look at broader issues including vaccine safety and economic ramifications, writes Stewart Sowman-Lund for The Bulletin.

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The Covid inquiry has been made public

We talked briefly yesterday about the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Covid-19 response, but that was before any of us had been given a chance to read it. Outgoing chair Tony Blakely gave a briefing to media earlier in the week where he urged the government to release it immediately. “For phase two to be maximally useful to the New Zealand taxpayer, you want to build on phase one – so let’s get it out there.” And that’s exactly what happened. Yesterday afternoon, all 700-plus pages of the report, plus a not-exactly-brief 110 page summary were dropped publicly.

Helpfully, The Spinoff has summarised everything you need to know – including positive and more critical reflections on the Covid response. The inquiry praised the initial communication strategy, but said that the ongoing presence of then-PM Jacinda Ardern at daily briefings was later seen to be “politicising” a health issue by some. On the practical side, the inquiry noted that “transitions from one strategy to the next were fuzzy and not always well-signalled” – such as moving from an elimination to suppression approach. On the use of lockdowns, the report found they were successful as a public health measure and that the widely criticised 2021 lockdown in Auckland was justified, though noting that there were reasons we had to rely on shutting down parts of the country for so long (such as slow border closures). On mandates and vaccine requirements, they proved both reassuring to some and drove division. In hindsight, the report noted, they have had “substantial, long-lasting impacts that would need to be taken into account in any future decisions around their use in a pandemic response”.

In total, as helpfully summarised by RNZ, the report makes 39 primary recommendations.

A lot to learn

The Spinoff’s Duncan Greive, in an interview with the commissioners early on in their tenure, reported that the Royal Commission was to be future-focused, rather than explicitly looking back at what went wrong. It was expressly set up to examine “the lessons learned from Aotearoa New Zealand’s response to Covid-19 that should be applied in preparation for any future pandemic”. In comments shared via the Science Media Centre, former Covid modeller Michael Plank said the report made a series of helpful recommendations, including the establishment of a central agency for pandemic planning and coordination. “To improve our chances of avoiding things like lockdowns, border closures and overflowing hospitals, we need to get serious about preparing for a range of different pandemic scenarios now,” said Plank. “We need to invest in our health system, science sector, community services, and public health functions like testing, contact tracing and vaccine delivery.”

Public health expert Michael Baker noted that implementing the report’s recommendations would be a “big challenge” and it was concerning that Te Whatu Ora had just announced cuts in positions in the National Public Health Service and its Digital and Data teams. “There is a strong argument to halt these cuts while NZ is implementing the recommendations of the Covid-19 inquiry.”

There is no indication yet when (or if) the government will respond to the inquiry’s recommendations, reported RNZ.

A political reckoning

Many still hold a grudge against the former Labour government for the strict measures implemented during the pandemic. While it was responsible for the party’s historic victory in 2020, it also contributed to its dramatic fall from grace in 2023. Current Labour leader Chris Hipkins was the minister for the Covid-19 response for much of the pandemic and spoke to media yesterday, reported the Herald’s Jamie Ensor. Hipkins accepted that mandatory vaccinations affected social cohesion, and that while Jacinda Ardern’s comment about the government being the “single source of truth” related to a specific issue, it ended up making people believe government decisions were “incontestable”. Hipkins said he did not believe border restrictions or vaccine rules were a “mistake”, though acknowledged they “came at a very big cost”. But speaking with Newstalk ZB’s Heather du Plessis-Allan, Hipkins added that he agreed with the report’s finding that some vaccine mandates “went a bit too wide”.

Hipkins has previously acknowledged that his party’s dismal performance in Auckland at last year’s election was likely a result of the drawn out lockdown in the city. The Spinoff’s Duncan Greive, in an opinion piece published last October, argued that many people were still carrying “some level of scar tissue from the myriad downstream impacts” caused by the lockdown.

This isn’t the end

There’s still a long road ahead. Remember, this is just the first inquiry – one that started almost two years ago. As of today, there’s a new Royal Commission team in town, stopping any chance of Covid vanishing into the rearview mirror. The Post’s Luke Malpass, reflecting on the findings of the first phase of the inquiry, argued that it will be this second inquiry that provides more useful recommendations. “Phase two of the report, which begins now and asks far broader questions about the response – more properly situated in the broader social and economic circumstance of New Zealand – will likely be far more revealing.”

A broader inquiry was a condition included in the coalition agreements of both Act and New Zealand First, though as the Herald reported, Winston Peters objected to the initial inquiry being allowed to properly conclude before the new one began. The party invoked the “agree to disagree” provision, having previously claimed that commission chair Tony Blakely was biased due to his involvement in the country’s Covid response.

The second phase, chaired by Grant Illingworth and due to report back in February 2026, will look at issues including vaccine safety and the impact lockdowns had on inflation, debt and business activity. So buckle in, there are a couple more years of Covid dissection still to come.