I sought the law and the law is gone: Revoked COVID-19 Directions in Western Australia

Julie Falck, Jessica Kerr and Marco Rizzi

This is a story about the edges of the law and the limits of accountability. It involves some of the most stringent public health measures ever imposed by an Australian government at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Those measures are no longer in force and, in the eyes of the Western Australian (WA) Government, they are accordingly no longer of interest to the public. They have effectively disappeared from public view. The effort required for three academic lawyers to find them, during the submission period for an ongoing independent review of the Government’s pandemic response, was alarming. This post offers a snapshot of how this issue has evolved in WA, and where we stand in 2023.