Covid inquiry response: Government sets new transparency requirements over key advice

The Royal Commission of Inquiry Phase One report, ordered by the previous Government and released in November 2024, made 39 recommendations aimed at building resilience in the health, economic and social systems so they can better handle the next pandemic.

The Phase Two report, ordered by the Government and released in March, had 24 recommendations more focused on improving decision-making, protecting people’s rights, managing the economy – including having a sufficient fiscal buffer – and social recovery.

The goal is to ensure a well-resourced and flexible pandemic plan that can be rolled out rapidly, protect people’s health and livelihoods, continue essential services and closely monitor what is happening.

A future pandemic response would also have clear lines of decision-making and accountability, with guardrails for people’s rights and fit-for-purpose legislation. Transparency and social cohesion were also highlighted as essential.

Today’s report outlining the Government’s response said that public trust suffered when advice behind lockdowns, mandates and other restrictions was not promptly released.

It committed to a new or refreshed pandemic framework, an All-of-Government Pandemic Response Plan, a Health Sector Pandemic Response Plan, a programme of regular pandemic exercises and simulations, and sector-specific plans across education, welfare, corrections and other services.

Stronger safeguards for human rights will be considered, “including the option of an enhanced role for oversight agencies [such as the Office of the Auditor-General or the Human Rights Commissioner] to ensure the appropriate exercise of public health powers”.

Resilience will also be improved by:

maintaining quarantine capability;improving contact tracing, testing and vaccination readiness;investing in health data systems;developing frameworks for future border restrictions and lockdown decisions.Health Minister Simeon Brown. Photo / Mark Mitchell

The implementation of the response will be subject to available funding in a tight fiscal environment.

“Some actions in this response will be contingent on new or reprioritised funding, or reprioritised work programmes, or will require staged implementation over time,” the report said.

“Where possible, actions will be completed within 12 months from the publication of the response. Where relevant, funding requirements will be considered through established Budget and fiscal management processes to ensure sustainable investment in pandemic preparedness and broader system improvements.”

Brown said that the pandemic required New Zealanders to place “enormous trust” in the Government and they made “real sacrifices to protect one another”.

“No one can say what the next shock will be, or when it will land.

“Restoring trust and confidence in decision-making is critical to maintaining social cohesion and ensuring New Zealanders are willing to make the sacrifices asked of them.”

Of the recommendations that were not fully accepted, the Government has decided against a dedicated four-yearly Financial Resilience Report, instead relying on Treasury, nor will it require public agencies to report annually on pandemic preparedness.

Brown also addressed the incorrect finding from the Phase Two report, which said that key vaccine advice from an expert group was never delivered to ministers.

If it had been actioned, it might have helped to prevent cases of heart inflammation among under-18s who were subject to a two-dose requirement in certain settings.

The Herald revealed the advice was in fact presented to Chris Hipkins, Covid Response Minister at the time, about three months after then-head of the health response Sir Ashley Bloomfield received it.

The Ministry of Health has acknowledged that the failure to pass the advice to ministers or to alert the public to it was a “significant” failing.

Today the ministry committed to ensuring ministers “formally acknowledge receipt of clinical advice, so that there is a clear and timely record of when clinical advice has been received and considered”, and providing advice on ministers “communicating key clinical advice to the public in clear and accessible terms, so that New Zealanders understand the evidence informing significant health decisions”.

The Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden asked her department what she should do about the Royal Commission’s incorrect finding, the Herald revealed this month. She then forwarded the options provided by officials to Brown’s office, one of which was highlighting the issue in Government’s response.

Today Brown released the letter he sent in March to Bloomfield’s successor, Director-General of Health Audrey Sonerson, with transparency expectations for expert advice, a further tranche of which has since been released.

“The New Zealand public deserves full confidence that the benefits and risks of vaccines are weighed honestly and communicated openly,” his letter said.

The Royal Commission reports said New Zealand’s response was successful in 2020, but struggled more in 2021 as it transitioned from elimination to living with the virus in the middle of a Delta outbreak.

They said the mandates were justifiable in late 2021 but a case could have been made for them to be lifted in early 2022, when Omicron was displacing Delta.

The reports found about half of the $60 billion Covid-19 Response and Recovery Fund, spent across more than 800 programmes, were not directly related to the pandemic. Labour has defended this as economic stimulus that kept people in jobs during the economic downturn from closed borders.

New Zealand First leader Winston Peters, who is in coalition with National and Act, said the Government’s response was “pathetic”, the terms of reference for the “lame duck” inquiry were “inadequate”, and all other political parties were part of a “cover up”.

“We’re going to make sure there’s another inquiry, so people who were maltreated and abused and not given the right advice do get some justice.”

Labour MP Kieran McAnulty called the Government’s response a “distraction” and said Labour would remain focused on the cost of living.

Epidemiologist Professor Michael Baker said response was “encouraging”, but was concerned that the Government had rejected the World Health Organisation’s International Health Regulations, “which are the key global legal framework for pandemic prevention and rapid response”.

“This decision places New Zealand among a very small number of countries that have chosen not to support these updated international health rules.”

Phase One report’s recommendations

Strengthen all-of-government coordination and accountability for pandemic preparednessEstablish a central agency function to coordinate all-of-government pandemic preparedness and other national risks.Ensure access to scenario-planning and modelling capability.Create a pandemic expert advisory group.Strengthen oversight and accountability through chief executive and ministerial/Cabinet structures.Publish the National Risk Register and improve preparedness transparency.Treasury to advise on sustainable funding for preparedness and resilience.

Ensure an all-of-government pandemic plan, response structure and supporting processes are ready

Develop an all-of-government pandemic response plan.Update the plan after national pandemic exercises.Develop a pandemic response structure that can be rapidly activated.Develop surge workforce and capability transfer arrangements.Prepare guidance and templates for urgent decision-making.Establish processes to protect democratic and human rights during pandemic responses.

Strengthen public health measures that may be required in a pandemic

Refine the health-system pandemic plan.Develop a comprehensive quarantine and isolation plan.Ensure rapid scaling of testing, tracing, vaccination and infection-control functions.Improve planning for border restrictions.Strengthen border operational capability.Maintain public health surveillance capability.Improve preparedness for vaccination programmes and vaccine delivery.

Ensure all sectors are prepared for a pandemic and ready to respond

Develop economic sector pandemic preparedness arrangements.Develop social sector pandemic preparedness arrangements.Develop education sector pandemic preparedness arrangements.Develop justice sector pandemic preparedness arrangements.Strengthen business continuity planning.Improve economic resilience and recovery planning.Improve social support and welfare planning.Improve community-level preparedness.Strengthen support for vulnerable populations.Improve continuity planning for essential services.Strengthen infrastructure and lifeline utility resilience.Improve supply-chain resilience.

Ensure enablers are in place

Improve Crown-Māori partnership arrangements for future pandemics.Ensure pandemic legislation is fit for purpose.Improve national data systems and information-sharing.Strengthen research, evidence and analytical capability.Improve communication systems and public information capability.Ensure critical infrastructure and digital enablers are ready.Implement the recommendationsEstablish formal oversight and accountability for implementation.Report progress regularly to Ministers and Parliament and review preparedness periodically.

Phase Two report’s recommendations

Systems that promote good Government decision-making

Limit exemptions from Regulatory Impact Statements to genuinely time-critical decisions.Update the Cabinet Manual to require prompt and regular reviews of decisions made outside normal quality-assurance processes.Present elimination strategies as temporary from the outset.Investigate establishing a permanent strategic function in Treasury or the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, with function responsibility for rapid epidemiological modelling; estimating health, social, economic and education impacts; improving real-time data; developing frameworks for weighing competing impactsCreate external triggers for regular, transparent strategic reviews through statutory reporting to Parliament and/or an independent review board.

Legislation as the guardrail for rights and freedoms

Develop standing primary pandemic legislation.Ensure legislation contains clear emergency powers, clear triggers, clear decision-makers, exemption mechanisms, procedural and substantive safeguards and flexibility for changing circumstances.Develop legislation through ordinary democratic processes, including consultation and select committee scrutiny.Limit urgent and bespoke legislation to exceptional situations and use sunset clauses.Publish advice relating to the exercise of pandemic powers, particularly advice concerning Bill of Rights consistency.

Agile and robust economic policy

Prepare and maintain a pandemic guide for decision-makers.Treasury to publish a Financial Resilience Report at least every four years.Government to align Fiscal Strategy Reports with the Financial Resilience Report.Clarify the respective roles of fiscal and monetary policy during major shocks.Develop implementable income-support and business-support options before the next pandemic.Investigate more frequent publication of economic indicators.Investigate an infrastructure maintenance priorities programme.Undertake further research on unconventional monetary policies used during Covid-19.Improve transparency and controls around Crown guarantees and indemnities.

Readiness for social impacts and post-pandemic recovery

Research service recovery after Covid-19, factors that enabled rapid recovery, delayed recovery factorsm, deteriorated outcomes and most effective interventions.Ensure governments use the best available science, explain evidence and limitations, and explain how decisions were reached.Assign an agency to monitor trust and social cohesion research and provide policy advice.Develop a clear evidence base on trust and social cohesion trends in New Zealand.

Derek Cheng is a senior journalist who started at the Herald in 2004. He has worked several stints in the press gallery team and is a former deputy political editor.