The Human Rights Issues with Australia’s Covid Response, By Brian Simpson

The Australian Human Rights Commission's report, released on March 11, 2025, and discussed in Rebekah Barnett's article "Australia's Covid Response Caused 'Significant Harm' to Human Rights," offers a scathing assessment of the nation's pandemic policies. Spanning nearly 1,000 pages, the report concludes that Australia's response to Covid-19 inflicted profound and lasting damage on human rights, driven by measures that were often excessive, poorly considered, and dismissive of individual liberties. Drawing from over 6,000 public submissions and extensive evidence, it paints a picture of a government apparatus that, while initially effective in curbing the virus, veered into overreach with consequences still reverberating as of March2025.

The report identifies a litany of human rights violations stemming from policies like border closures, lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and school shutdowns. International border restrictions, hailed early on for keeping Australia's case numbers low, are singled out for their brutality. Tens of thousands of Australians were stranded abroad, unable to return due to strict caps on arrivals—caps that persisted even as other nations adapted. The report cites the story of Jayden, a young boy separated from his dying mother for over a year, unable to secure a flight or exemption despite her terminal illness. His mother passed away before he could reach her, a tragedy the commission frames as emblematic of policies that ignored personal hardship in favor of blanket rules.

Domestically, state border closures and city-wide lockdowns further eroded freedoms. The report highlights how these measures, often imposed with little notice, trapped people away from family, jobs, and medical care. Victoria's 2020 lockdown, one of the world's longest, confined 5 million people to their homes under a regime of police-enforced curfews and movement limits. Public housing towers in Melbourne saw residents locked in without warning, their access to essentials curtailed, a move the commission deems disproportionate and dehumanising. These actions, while aimed at public health, failed to balance necessity with rights to movement, association, and dignity, leaving scars of isolation and distrust.

Vaccine mandates, a cornerstone of Australia's strategy to reopen, draw particular ire. The report argues they infringed on bodily autonomy and equality before the law, disproportionately harming those who refused vaccination—whether for medical, religious, or personal reasons. Jobs were lost, social exclusion deepened, and entire communities, like First Nations groups, faced coercion without adequate consultation. The commission notes that while mandates boosted vaccination rates, their blunt enforcement ignored exemptions and eroded public trust, a fracture evident in ongoing vaccine hesitancy as of 2025.

Children bore a heavy burden, with school closures disrupting education and mental health. The report cites evidence of developmental delays, increased anxiety, and a surge in self-harm among youth, particularly in disadvantaged areas where remote learning was a hollow substitute. First Nations communities, already marginalised, suffered further as policies overlooked cultural needs—remote lockdowns cut off access to country, while urban measures disrupted kinship networks. Migrants, casual workers, and victims of domestic violence also emerge as casualties, their vulnerabilities exacerbated by inflexible rules that offered little recourse.

The commission doesn't deny Australia's alleged early success (challenged by Covid mandate sceptics, I note)—its low death toll compared to global peers—but argues this came at an unjustifiable cost. Policies were often "one-size-fits-all," ignoring local realities and human rights frameworks like the Siracusa Principles, which demand restrictions be necessary, proportionate, and time-limited. Instead, the report finds, authorities leaned on emergency powers with insufficient oversight, sidelining parliamentary scrutiny and public input. The human cost—grieving families, broken livelihoods, traumatised children—piles up as evidence of a system that prioritised control over compassion.

Critically, the report warns that this legacy of harm threatens future resilience. Public trust, battered by heavy-handed tactics, may not withstand another pandemic; Australians are unlikely to tolerate lockdowns or mandates again. As Barnett notes, the findings align with earlier critiques, like the 2024 Federal Covid Inquiry, but go further in demanding accountability—reparations for those wronged, reforms to emergency laws, and a reckoning for leaders who failed to weigh rights against risks. In conclusion, the report concludes that Australia's Covid response saved lives but broke too much in the process, a lesson in the fragility of liberty when fear takes the reins.

Now just zero in on reality as Covid vax and mandate sceptics have argued, that the mandates and lockdowns did not save lives, but took them. If the Human Rights Commission had taken that line, the report would have been even more grim.

https://news.rebekahbarnett.com.au/p/australias-covid-response-caused