The objective of this audit was to assess the effectiveness of the Australian government's management of international travel restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This review report finds that Australia has had remarkable success in managing COVID-19. Our island nation status, early decisions to manage arrivals, and prompt and effective action by public health officials, together with widespread public cooperation, have been key to this success.

This paper argues that as state governments begin trialling home quarantine programs, they need to take active steps to ensure they are not crossing a new frontier in the surveillance of citizens by using facial recognition technology.

The Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, has claimed that the hotel quarantine system designed to contain the spread of COVID-19 in Australia from returning overseas travellers is 99.9 per cent effective. The verdict: Mr Morrison's claim is spin.

A key pillar of Australia’s success in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic has been its closure of international borders. This paper addresses the principal issues concerning repatriation policy, and sets out recommendations to address deficiencies.

The UK government is finalising arrangements for a partial hotel quarantine system to begin on 15 February 2021. This paper outlines those gaps and challenges, posing a series of questions the government must answer if it wants its quarantine system to be a success.

The second wave of COVID-19 cases in Victoria led to a series of strict restrictions in the state and had devastating impacts on peoples’ lives, livelihoods and mental health. This inquiry final report finds that there were serious failings, in terms of provision of pandemic...

In March 2020, Australians suffered restrictions on their businesses, liberty and freedom of movement - previously unseen in peacetime. The purpose of this paper is not to debate the efficacy of virus interventions. It is to determine whether governments’ COVID-19 policies were appropriately justified, weighed...

This interim report identifies issues that have emerged from the COVID-19 Hotel Quarantine Board of Inquiry to date, and makes recommendations for a quarantine program in Victoria, as the state begins to consider re-opening to international arrivals.

Australia implemented international border restrictions early in the course of the pandemic in order to prevent the spread of COVID-19. This review examines quarantine systems and processes in all States and Territories, except Victoria.

Former prime minister Tony Abbott labelled Victoria a "health dictatorship" and called for its COVID-19 restrictions to be eased, claiming the state responded to its second wave of coronavirus infections with "the most severe lockdown tried anywhere in the world outside of Wuhan". Verdict: Mr...

Drawing on evidence from the Victorian Hotel Quarantine Inquiry, this policy brief aims is to lay the foundations for better understanding the features and limits of contracting-out, and to urge reassessment of its appropriateness in relation to government functions that carry significant consequences for public...

This Special Commission of Inquiry responds to the "mishap" that was the disembarkation of passengers from the cruise ship Ruby Princess on the morning of 19 March 2020. The report finds that on the whole, New South Wales public health officials did attempt to protect...

As Victoria grapples with surging COVID-19 cases, sparked essentially by breaches linked to hotel quarantine, divisions have emerged between the Federal and Victorian governments over whether the Australian Defence Force offered assistance to help secure quarantine hotels in Victoria.

The Kimberley Aboriginal Medical Services (KAMS) COVID-19 Toolkit has been developed to assist KAMS remote clinics, Kimberley Renal Services and Headspace Broome in planning and responding to the current Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak.

Australia could see higher proportional death rates from the novel coronavirus outbreak than in China, due to our relatively older population and the more severe symptoms of the virus in older people, according to this perspective by Professor Raina MacIntyre, Head of the Biosecurity Program...

This report is an independent review of Australia’s quarantine and biosecurity arrangements which outlines a plan to set up a new national authority, bringing together quarantine, biosecurity and parts of the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry.