Submission to Inquiry into the Australian Government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

This submission addresses the terms of reference of the Inquiry focusing on two discrete areas: 1. the role of personal data in managing the pandemic; and 2. the differential effect of the pandemic economic policy response on women relative to men. 1. Summary 1.1. Data management >> As the COVID-19 pandemic will likely last into the medium term, epidemiologists are likely increasingly to turn to big data technologies. >> The government currently lacks a social licence in terms of data use which is likely to have hampered the uptake of the COVIDSafe app and which will likely adversely affect any other data-based technologies relevant to pandemic management. >> To be in a position to harness any benefits offered by data-rich technologies in a public health context, Parliament and government must engage with the public to enact a charter of data rights enshrining substantive rights and protections for individuals in relation to all data. 1.2. Women >> Women have been disproportionately affected by job losses during the COVID-19 pandemic, that have revealed the precarity of their work in the normally functioning economy. >> The financial measures implemented as part of the government’s COVID-19 economic response have failed to respond to the existing structural differences between men’s and women’s workforce participation. >> Government should implement a women’s policy statement representing an analysis of the effect of policy on women’s financial wellbeing, to avoid or minimize adverse economic effects in both the short and the long term.