This policy brief canvasses key options available for reopening parliament and seeks to examine the key obstacles to employing alternative means for parliamentary sittings, such as sitting remotely.

Key points:

• The sidelining of parliaments across Australia has been a central ‘blind spot’ in the nation’s largely effective and well-coordinated pandemic response, which, despite the recent rise in COVID-19 cases and deaths, has kept numbers among the lowest in the Western world.
• In meeting the challenge of keeping parliaments running, valuable lessons can be learned from overseas, especially from targeted measures taken in the UK, New Zealand, and Canada. The latter show that parliaments do not hinder an effective pandemic response.
• There are no material obstacles to re-opening Australia’s parliaments, with a range of options available – especially ‘hybrid’ models mixing online and face-to-face means for conducting parliamentary business. The main sticking point appears to be political resistance based on a legitimate concern that something valuable would be lost if parliament does not meet in person, and possibly a sense that fuller sittings might slow the crisis response.