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Prime Minister Scott Morrison is seeking to build an international coalition to give the World Health Organisation (WHO) — or another body — powers equivalent to those of a weapons inspector to avoid another catastrophic pandemic.
Key points:
- The leaders of the US, Germany and France are understood to be open to the idea
- Mr Morrison is pushing for a body with inspection powers to monitor disease outbreaks
- The Australian Government is unsure if the WHO is the best option, as each of the 194 member states have veto power over reforms
Mr Morrison has pitched the proposal to several world leaders in recent days, including United States President Donald Trump, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron.
Australia is keen to ensure the lessons from the COVID-19 outbreak are not forgotten, especially the WHO's late declaration of the coronavirus pandemic.
So far, the pandemic has seen more than 2.5 million infections and 177,500 deaths.
There has been widespread international concern that China not only downplayed the seriousness of the virus, but had undue influence over the WHO, which did not declare the outbreak a global pandemic until March 11 — a fortnight after Australia declared it a pandemic.
"The actions that the Australian Government have taken and that included getting out well ahead of the World Health Organisation at Dr [Brendan] Murphy's … very insightful advice," Mr Morrison said on February 27.
The Australian Government believes that, in order to understand and suppress future disease outbreaks, the world needs unfettered access to data and medical information.
One of the limitations under the WHO, founded in 1948, is that international officials must be invited by nations before being allowed to investigate.
The Government is somewhat dubious of the chances of reforming the WHO, which gives veto power to each of its 194 member states.
Given the barriers to reforming the WHO, the Australian Government believes establishing a new world health oversight body may be the best option.
So far, the French President has publicly responded to Mr Morrison's calls for a pandemic probe.
Mr Macron told Mr Morrison now was not the time for an international investigation into the coronavirus pandemic and that the urgency was to act in unison before looking for who was at fault, an official said.
"He says he agrees that there have been some issues at the start, but that the urgency is for cohesion, and that it is no time to talk about this, while reaffirming the need for transparency for all players, not only the WHO," an Elysee official told Reuters on Wednesday.
PM speaks to Bill Gates on WHO
The COVID-19 virus outbreak is believed to have started in a Wuhan wet market, which reopened earlier this month.
China first reported a case of "pneumonia of unknown cause" to the WHO's China headquarters on December 31, 2019.
Foreign Minister Marise Payne has proposed an independent international review of the coronavirus outbreak but is yet to settle on a preferred mechanism.
Labor has backed Senator Payne's call for an independent review.
Mr Trump last week suspended US funding to the WHO as his administration launches its own investigation into the pandemic.
The US is the WHO's biggest donor, accounting for about 20 per cent of its budget.
The second-largest WHO donor is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which upped its contribution after Mr Trump's decision.
Mr Morrison spoke to Bill Gates on Tuesday morning about the WHO.
Your questions on coronavirus answered:
Reform unlikely without China's support, expert says
International law expert Don Rothwell said without China's support, reform of the WHO faced considerable hurdles and suggested a better alternative might be using international treaties.
"A thorough investigation into the outbreak and spread of the pandemic can only take place with Chinese cooperation," Professor Rothwell told the ABC.
"The UN could establish a commission of inquiry but this would require China's support in the Security Council.
"China could use its veto to block such a proposal."
Professor Rothwell, from the Australian National University, said the international response to the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster might prove to be an important precedent when it came to investigating the COVID-19 outbreak without apportioning blame to China.
"There, the international community, concerned over the Soviet Union's cover-up of the accident, quickly responded with the adoption of two treaties [which] dealt with the obligation of a country to notify others once a nuclear accident had occurred that could have cross-border impacts, and the capacity of other countries in assist in responding to the accident," he said.
"Remarkably, the Convention on Early Notification of a Nuclear Accident was negotiated five months after the Chernobyl accident and become operative a month later.
"Importantly, these treaties did not seek to apportion responsibility but rather to address the response to future nuclear accidents."
What you need to know about coronavirus:
ABC/Reuters
Topics: government-and-politics, infectious-diseases-other, federal-government, health, respiratory-diseases, covid-19, community-and-society, australia
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