A damning report on Australia’s COVID-19 response called Fault Lines that began in April has found Australia failed its most vulnerable and its bureaucratic decisions lacked compassion.

Funded partly by Andrew Forrest’s Minderoo Foundation, the report says schools should’ve remained opened and border closures and lockdowns were the result of policy failures, with decisions made in the “fog of uncertainty”.

Western Sydney University chancellor and former department of prime minister and cabinet secretary Peter Shergold found the economic and social havoc wreaked by government “overreach” found border closures were also avoidable at the pandemic height.

Tap PLAY below to hear what else the review found

“It was not transparent how decisions were being made, you know how people were being able to go overseas or not, or go across borders,” he told Liam Bartlett on 6PR Mornings.

“It seemed to be very inflexible, and it did lack compassion and indeed common sense in many instances.”

The final report of the Shergold panel, which was funded by three private philanthropic trusts including Minderoo Foundation, identifies four substantive failings in Australia’s response to the COVID crisis:

• inequitable government support measures that exacerbated existing social disadvantages
• the unjustified closure of schools; inadequate
• protection of aged care residents;
• the overuse of “brutal” lockdowns and border closures.

The review has been informed by 200 health experts, public servants, epidemiologists and more.

According to the Australia Bureau of Statistics, coronavirus killed 1,122 of the 171,000 people who died in Australia last year – equating to 0.6 per cent of the national total.