The panel warned this was “likely to have significant adverse impacts on children’s outcomes in education,social development and mental and physical health”,and contributed to women leaving the workplace to carry the burden of homeschooling.
“Schools should have stayed open,” said the review. “For children and parents (particularly women),we failed to get the balance right between protecting health and imposing long-term costs on education,mental health,the economy and workforce outcomes.
“Women were over 30 per cent more likely than men to leave the workforce in the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic. They were more likely to lose pay,burn through leave and fall behind on savings and superannuation.”
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The split between the states and the federal government over school closures – led by a co-ordinated push by Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews and former NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian to adopt a tougher public health response – was one of the first significant fractures within national cabinet.
Shergold and his fellow review panel members note that the overlay of politics on public health considerations “weakened the national cabinet’s effectiveness over time” and contributed to an erosion of public trust in Australia’s pandemic response and the health advice it relied on.
“State leaders insisted on going their own way,emboldened by their constitutional prerogatives,” the report concluded.