The leaders who oversaw Australia's COVID-19 pandemic response do not need to apologise to rebuild deeply eroded public trust, Health Minister Mark Butler has said.

An independent inquiry in to the response warned trust had been diminished for a range of reasons including heavy-handed restrictions, vaccine mandates and inconsistent state and territory responses, making people unlikely to accept other harsh measures in any future pandemic.

Appearing on the ABC's AM program, Mr Butler was asked if leaders who oversaw prolonged lockdowns should apologise to the public to gain back trust.

Instead, he pointed to the report-backed creation of a Centre for Disease Control, which the government has committed $251 million to establish.

"No, our contribution to rebuilding trust is going to be to put in place a Centre for Disease Control," he said.

"I have enormous respect for all of the leaders who led our pandemic response …. they worked enormously hard, they made some incredibly courageous decisions.

"I think the key takeaway from this report is that our leaders did not have the tools that they needed, there were not the pandemic plans in place when this thing hit."

The year-long inquiry was conducted by former NSW public servant Robyn Kruk, epidemiologist Catherine Bennett and economist Angela Jackson.

It found Australia fared well during the pandemic compared to other countries which experienced a larger loss of life with bigger impacts on the health system and economy.

But it said the response was "not as effective as it could have been" for a once-in-a century event where there was "no playbook for pivotal actions".

Situation would have to be 'dire' to consider vaccine mandates in future: former top doc

Former deputy chief medical officer Nick Coatsworth, who was part of the response "apparatus," said health authorities had sought to strike a challenging balance in their approach to stemming the impact of COVID.

"The problem was that we almost followed the health advice, our health advice to a fault, in a way," he told the ABC.

"There were trade-offs between controlling this virus and minimising the effect that it had on our elderly Australians, in particular those in nursing homes, and then the effects of the restrictions which were disproportionately felt by younger Australians."

He said the report provided a blueprint for future pandemics.

"I do think we would have to have a very dire situation for us ever to implement vaccine mandates again," he said.

"I don't think we lost large numbers of our community in terms of mistrust, but we did lose an important number of people who don't trust government vaccination programs.

"When you're talking about vaccination programs, it only takes a loss of 1 to 3 per cent of trust, and suddenly you've got a whooping cough outbreak."

Leaders defend their pandemic responses

The report did not directly delve in to the state responses, but it made a number of findings about how actions of the different jurisdictions impacted Australians.

Victoria's former chief health officer Brett Sutton said the review made sense in "broad terms", but noted the pandemic eroded trust just as the response did.

Appearing on ABC Melbourne, he was asked about whether he thought a fractured response from the different states and territories as well as different opinions from different scientists contributed to the loss of trust.

"I probably have a personal view that we shouldn't all speak with one voice," he said.

"The issue of consensus is, is a tricky one, because, you know, WA's response to COVID was always going to be different to what Victoria was facing.

"It's not a problem that there are different choices that are made at a policy level with the evidence that's available. It is a problem if we can't have the fulsome conversation with the community about why those differences might exist and why experts across the country might have different views about the same evidence."

He said he believed the CDC could see Australia take a more united role in the event of a future pandemic.

Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan, who was a frontbencher during the pandemic, defended the state government's handling of the crisis.

"There were a range of measures that were focused on public health, on a public health response, that were unprecedented," she told the ABC.

"And they were unprecedented because they needed to be done to protect the health of our community."

She said the government would take time to review and consider the report.

"There is certainly always lessons that can be learnt but I think it's important to be really clear — this was a 1-in-100 year pandemic.

"There were a range of state-based measures that, certainly from the perspective here in Victoria, was focused on a public health response because people were dying from this deadly disease."

Former Coalition health minister Greg Hunt, who was health minister during the pandemic, said it was disappointing the government had ruled out unilateral actions of the states and territories in the inquiry's terms of reference.

He said COVID-related deaths had increased since Labor won the last election.

"It would be surprising if the current prime minister did not appear before the inquiry given that COVID deaths have tripled since May 2022," he said in a statement.

"Perhaps most fundamentally, as the Lancet Global Burden of Disease Study found in March of 2024, between the start of 2019 and the end of 2021 the world lost an average 1.6 years of life expectancy. 

"Over the same period average life expectancy increased in Australia by 0.2 years."