(Image: Private Media/Gorkie)

Remember the National COVID-19 Commission? Scott Morrison’s hand-picked group of business leaders who were supposed to help guide us through the pandemic, but disappeared from view after talking up a gas-led recovery?

Australia’s response to the pandemic has had plenty of success stories. But there are several of people, bodies or solutions dragged by the Morrison government into the spotlight, framed as central to our pandemic response, only to either spectacularly under-deliver, or quietly exit the stage.  

The COVID Commission

Scott Morrison quietly dissolved the National COVID-19 Commission in May, declaring the “emergency” part of the pandemic was over, in a statement that aged like Bush on the USS Abraham Lincoln.

So what exactly was the point of the commission? Led by former Fortescue CEO Neville “Nev” Power, Morrison told reporters in March last year, its job was “quite simply, to solve problems”.

“Problems that require the private sector working together with the private sector, CEOs, to talk to CEOs and to be engaged with by CEOs to ensure that the private to private effort is there solving problems in the national interest and it’s being mobilised,” he said.

The body was stacked from the outset with industry titans. Those who weren’t, like ex-Labor minister Greg Combet, quickly left. The commission’s one real contribution was to lay the groundwork for the Coalition’s gas-led recovery. By the time it left the picture, its members had pocketed thousands in fees.  

But the more frustrating story is about what the commission didn’t do. In theory, bringing together industry leaders and bureaucrats isn’t a bad idea. It could’ve played a key role working out how to effectively involve businesses in the vaccine rollout, or incentivise people to get jabbed.

Anyone with any kind of foresight could’ve predicted workplace vaccine mandates might become one of the thorniest industrial relations issues in years. A body with business figures, ex-union leaders and bureaucrats might’ve been useful there.

We’ll also never know how useful the commission was, because its work was deemed cabinet in confidence. But we did get Power telling us the vaccine rollout was “a massive logistical exercise”. Insights clearly worth $267,345.

The COVIDsafe App

It wasn’t that long ago that some journalists told us it was our patriotic duty to download the COVIDsafe app, and that only “Twitter cranks and contrarians” had failed to do so. Scott Morrison compared it to sunscreen but for COVID. 

Instead, the app is one of the government’s great pandemic failures, an $8 million white elephant. Less than half the country ever downloaded it. A report into the app found it only helped identify 779 cases, and was rarely a tool in the contact tracing arsenal. It’s been since usurped by the humble QR code, and each state’s individual contact tracing app. 

Commodore Eric Young

Where is the commodore? The career navy man entered the picture in April, alongside Health Minister Greg Hunt, as operations co-ordinator of the Vaccine Operations Centre, with the goal to reset the vaccine rollout.

Young has all but disappeared from view since Lieutenant General JJ Frewen was brought in to run the COVID Vaccine Task Force (aka “Operation COVID Shield”).

After Frewen’s appointment, Morrison said Young would “continue to have a senior leadership role in the Commonwealth Vaccine Operations Centre”. But Young’s COVID secondment ended at the end of financial year, and he’s returned to the navy full time.

Perhaps Young’s greatest achievement was symbolic. Drafted in days after Morrison said national cabinet was on a “war footing” to fix the vaccine rollout, his appointment helped accelerate the full-blown khakification of Australia’s pandemic response.

Management consultants

The pandemic has been a bonanza for big management consultants, who’ve made millions providing “advice” to the government nobody will ever actually see, and which seems to have seriously failed to deliver so far.

Take McKinsey, which has raked in over $10 million in pandemic related contracts, many involving the vaccine rollout. One one contract, the firm apparently didn’t provide “specific advice” to the government, and couldn’t produce anything beyond an eight-page report. Last year, McKinsey consultants also convinced the government and Health to go slow on signing contracts with prospective vaccine developers last year. 

Then there’s Accenture, which got $8 million to track the vaccine rollout, and produced… an infographic.