When Governments Delay, Victims Pay, And accountability quietly disappears.
When a government makes a serious mistake, who pays?
Usually, the victims.
And when the government takes twenty or thirty years to acknowledge that mistake, the victims pay again.
They pay through years of uncertainty, legal battles, financial hardship and the frustration of being told that their suffering has not yet been officially recognised.
By the time the government finally apologises, many of those responsible have retired, the politicians have moved on, and some of the victims are dead.
Delay doesn't just postpone justice. It can destroy the possibility of accountability.
A recent video by Dr John Campbell examines a British parliamentary debate on 27 October 2026 about the government's response to the UK COVID-19 Inquiry.
During the pandemic, governments exercised extraordinary powers. They confined people to their homes, closed businesses, disrupted education, restricted travel and family contact, and imposed vaccination requirements on sections of the population.
Some emergency measures were justified. Others remain disputed. But the damage caused by restrictions was real, and the decisions deserve rigorous scrutiny.
COVID vaccines reduced the risk of severe illness, particularly among vulnerable people. They also caused rare but sometimes serious adverse reactions. Those recognised injuries deserve proper compensation.
Britain established a major public inquiry in 2022. Its report on vaccines and therapeutics was published in April 2026.
The Inquiry recommended reforming the Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme. The government responded in October, acknowledging the need for reform but without committing to the recommended changes or a timetable.
Meanwhile, injured people continue to wait.
This is the problem with inquiries that identify failures but leave the consequences to another department, another review or another government.
An inquiry is not accountability. Accountability requires action.
Campbell's video reminded me how frequently serious institutional failures have followed the same depressing pattern.
First comes the harm. Then denial, resistance or delay. Eventually an inquiry establishes the facts. Years later, there may be an apology or compensation.
By then, the people who made the decisions are often long gone.
Here are examples from Britain, Australia, Canada and the United States.
These cases are not identical. Some involved government decisions, others failures of regulation, corporate misconduct or official secrecy. The dates also distinguish different milestones—recognition, disclosure, apology and compensation are not the same thing.
But the recurring problem is unmistakable.
The institutions responsible for addressing the harm can take years or decades to deliver justice.
Consider the British infected blood scandal. Thousands were infected through contaminated blood products. In 2024, the British Prime Minister finally delivered a comprehensive apology.
Or Hillsborough, where families fought for 23 years before an independent panel exposed the extent of the failures and misleading official accounts.
Or Australia's Robodebt scandal, where people were pursued for debts calculated using an unlawful method before the programme was dismantled and a Royal Commission exposed what had gone wrong.
The victims were expected to comply with government decisions immediately.
The government, however, could take years to accept responsibility.
We tend to treat delays in government inquiries as unfortunate administrative problems.
But delay has consequences—and those consequences are not shared equally.
For the victim, every additional year may mean another year without compensation, another year of legal expenses, another year of illness or financial distress.
For the institution, time can be an advantage.
Public attention fades. Documents become harder to locate. Witnesses die. Ministers retire. Officials move to other jobs.
Eventually, responsibility becomes so dispersed that nobody is held personally accountable.
The government may apologise. Taxpayers may fund compensation. But the individuals whose decisions caused the damage may suffer no consequences at all.
The taxpayer pays for the original failure, pays for the inquiry, and then pays the compensation.
The people responsible may pay nothing.
That is a perverse incentive.
We cannot punish governments for every decision that turns out badly. Emergencies involve uncertainty, and honest mistakes are inevitable.
But serious failures demand more than an apology delivered decades later.
When credible evidence of major government wrongdoing or negligence emerges, there should be a prompt, independent investigation with the power to obtain documents and identify who made the relevant decisions.
Victims should have access to timely compensation without being forced into years of expensive litigation.
Inquiry recommendations should have deadlines, publicly identified responsible officials and regular progress reports.
And where serious negligence, deliberate concealment or misconduct is established, those responsible should face appropriate professional, civil or criminal consequences.
Responsibility should not evaporate simply because someone acted on behalf of the government.
The lesson from these scandals is not that governments must never make mistakes.
It is that governments must not be allowed to escape responsibility by taking decades to acknowledge them.
The COVID pandemic provides another opportunity to test whether we have learned that lesson.
We need to know which decisions were justified, which caused avoidable harm, who made them and what consequences should follow.
We also need to ensure that people genuinely harmed by government policies are not left fighting for recognition until it is too late.
History shows what happens when governments are allowed to delay.
Victims grow old. Some die. The responsible officials disappear into retirement. Eventually a new government offers an apology and sends the bill to taxpayers.
That is not accountability. It is accountability by attrition.
And unless we change the system, the next government failure will follow exactly the same path.
An election must not only be fair. It must be demonstrably fair, so that even those who lose can accept the result.
Democracy rests on a simple proposition: the people choose their government.
But there is an equally important condition. The people must trust that the election accurately reflects their choice.
Without that confidence, democracy begins to lose legitimacy. Winners claim a mandate, losers question the result, and the peaceful transfer of power becomes increasingly difficult.
With the American midterm elections approaching, this is an appropriate time to ask a fundamental question:
What does it take to make an election trustworthy?
Surely we should be able to identify a set of basic safeguards that every functioning democracy can meet.
Russia holds elections. So do numerous other countries that describe themselves as democracies.
But ballot boxes alone do not establish democracy.
If opposition candidates cannot compete freely, voters face intimidation, or electoral authorities answer to the government of the day, an election cannot be considered genuinely free merely because votes were counted.
Established democracies use different systems. Some have compulsory voting, others voluntary voting. Some use proportional representation, others single-member electorates. Some count by hand, others use electronic equipment.
Australia's system is particularly complex, combining compulsory voting, preferential voting and a detailed Senate counting process.
Yet complexity does not necessarily undermine integrity.
What matters is whether the rules are clear, the process is independently administered, and the results can be verified.
Here are eleven practical safeguards against which any electoral system should be assessed.
There must be a reliable register of eligible voters, maintained by an independent authority.
Citizens should be able to verify their enrolment, correct errors and challenge improper entries through transparent procedures.
Every eligible citizen should have the opportunity to vote, and no person should be permitted to vote more than once.
Before receiving a ballot, voters should establish their identity and eligibility.
Photo identification is one possible method, provided acceptable alternatives are available for people without conventional documents.
The requirements must be practical, consistent and accessible.
The objective is straightforward: ensure that the person casting the vote is entitled to do so, without creating unnecessary barriers for legitimate voters.
An election should have a clearly defined voting day, preferably a weekend or public holiday.
There is a reason for this beyond administrative convenience.
Voters should ideally make their decision with the same information available to everyone at the close of the campaign.
When voting begins weeks before election day, some people cast their ballots before important debates, revelations or policy announcements have occurred.
Those votes cannot be reconsidered.
That raises a legitimate question about the increasingly common practice of extended early voting.
There may be some reasonable exceptions; -people who are travelling, hospitalised, or unable to attend because of disability must have practical alternatives.
But exceptions should not become the normal method of voting simply because they are convenient.
Postal voting is necessary for some voters, but it must operate under clear and verifiable rules.
Applications should be authenticated, ballots tracked and deadlines strictly enforced.
Here an important distinction needs to be made.
A postal vote should be completed and posted no later than election day. It need not necessarily be received by election day.
A ballot legitimately posted on time should not be rejected merely because the postal service delivers it several days later, and there must be a reasonable final deadline for receiving it.
This protects the voter's right to participate while preventing ballots from being cast after the election has concluded.
Every ballot issued must be properly accounted for.
The electoral authority must record who has voted and have procedures to identify attempted duplicate voting.
Postal and other absentee ballots require particular attention because the voter is not physically present at a polling station.
But the secrecy of the ballot is fundamental.
The system must establish who has voted, never how they voted.
No citizen should face an unreasonable burden simply to vote.
There should be sufficient polling places, trained staff and voting materials to keep waiting times within reasonable limits.
A useful operational target would be no more than 30 minutes in the queue under normal conditions.
Polling stations must also accommodate people with disabilities and other legitimate access needs.
Long queues should be treated as an administrative failure requiring attention, not an unavoidable feature of democracy.
Election authorities should have enough staff and resources to complete the initial count of ordinary ballots within 48 hours.
The longer a result remains uncertain, the greater the opportunity for confusion, rumours and disputes.
However, speed must never override accuracy.
Close contests, preferential counts, postal ballots received within the lawful deadline and recounts may legitimately take longer.
What matters is that the public can see how many votes have been counted, how many remain outstanding and why the final result has not yet been declared.
Vote counting should take place in secure, observable facilities.
Continuous video monitoring of counting areas could provide an additional safeguard, provided it protects ballot secrecy and does not interfere with officials.
The public should also have access to clear counting procedures, published results and reconciliation records.
The objective is to make the process verifiable, rather than asking citizens simply to accept an official assurance that everything was done correctly.
Candidates and political parties must have the right to appoint scrutineers to observe counting.
They should be able to examine procedures, raise objections and challenge questionable decisions through established channels.
Counting should always be conducted under conditions that permit independent scrutiny.
However, a party should not be able to obstruct an election simply by refusing to send a scrutineer. Where party representatives are absent, independent observers and documented procedures should provide accountability.
Elections should be administered by a professional institution independent of the government of the day.
It should oversee enrolment, polling arrangements, ballot security, counting and publication of results.
Its leadership should be appointed transparently, protected from political interference and accountable under the law.
Australia's Electoral Commission provides an established example of independent election administration.
Those competing for power should not control the rules or the counting process.
No election involving millions of people will be entirely free of mistakes.
Polling stations may experience equipment failures. Ballot papers may be mishandled. Officials may make errors.
The important question is whether problems can be identified, investigated and corrected.
An independent electoral authority should have clear powers to resolve administrative disputes, publish its findings and take corrective action.
Serious unresolved disputes must also be subject to independent judicial review.
Beyond these eleven requirements, four additional protections are important.
An unbroken chain of custody. Every ballot should be accounted for, from printing and distribution to collection, storage and counting.
Independent audits. Ballots issued, returned, rejected and counted should be reconciled. Discrepancies must be investigated, with recounts and independent audits available where appropriate.
Meaningful penalties. Electoral fraud, intimidation, ballot tampering and deliberate interference should attract enforceable penalties, regardless of political affiliation.
Genuine political competition. Voters must be free to choose between competing candidates and political positions. An impeccably counted election is meaningless if opposition candidates cannot participate freely.
Australia demonstrates that a complicated voting system can nevertheless produce results that are broadly accepted.
Compulsory voting and preferential counting add complexity, yet the Australian Electoral Commission administers elections through established procedures, with scrutineers, ballot reconciliation and avenues for challenging results.
That is a considerable institutional achievement.
But it does not mean every feature of the system is beyond criticism.
Voting before election day is increasingly treated as an ordinary convenience rather than an exception. Yet this means many Australians make their final electoral decision before the campaign has concluded.
A system can be trustworthy and still benefit from reform.
One mistake electoral authorities can make is to assume that citizens should simply trust the system.
Trust should not be automatic.
Citizens are entitled to ask whether electoral rolls are accurate, ballots are secure, votes are counted correctly and irregularities are investigated.
Those questions deserve clear, factual answers.
Equally, allegations of electoral fraud must be supported by evidence.
An accusation does not become true merely because it is repeated, and unsupported claims can themselves undermine confidence in legitimate elections.
The answer to public suspicion is neither blind trust nor endless accusation.
It is a transparent process capable of demonstrating what actually happened.
The ultimate test of election integrity is not whether the winners are satisfied.
Winners usually are.
The real test is whether those who voted for the losing side can examine the process, understand how the result was reached, and accept that the election was conducted fairly.
They may dislike the result. They may strongly oppose the incoming government.
But they should have confidence that the votes were honestly cast, accurately counted and independently verified.
That confidence cannot be created by speeches, slogans or demands that people trust the authorities.
It must be earned through an electoral process that is fair, accessible, transparent and open to scrutiny.
Because when people lose confidence in the ballot box, they begin to lose confidence in democracy itself.
And that is a far greater danger than losing an election.
Imagine commissioning an engineer to design a bridge. You pay a substantial fee, confident that the engineer has the qualifications, experience and professional judgement to do the job.
The bridge is built. It collapses. People are killed.
Would we shrug our shoulders and say that engineering is complicated, nobody can predict everything, and perhaps we should learn some lessons for next time?
Of course not.
There would be investigations. Questions about the calculations, materials, assumptions and safety margins. If negligence were established, the engineer could face substantial financial liability, professional sanctions and, in sufficiently serious circumstances, criminal prosecution.
And rightly so.
So why do we appear to apply a different standard to other experts whose advice can affect thousands, even millions, of people?
Consider the latest embarrassment involving Deloitte, one of the world's largest professional consulting firms.
The Western Australian government commissioned a $166,000 feasibility report examining possible university mergers.
The report contained extraordinary financial discrepancies. In one scenario, figures adding up to $659 million were presented as $399 million—a difference of $260 million.
There were also apparently AI-generated references, including one containing ChatGPT metadata.
Deloitte acknowledged using generative AI to assist with aspects of the report. The company has maintained that the errors did not affect the underlying modelling or conclusions.
Perhaps they didn't.
But here's my question: If a consultancy cannot reliably check the arithmetic and references in its own report, why should we trust its more complicated conclusions?
The government is seeking reimbursement. That is a start.
But it raises a much larger question about the responsibilities of professional advisers.
We don't pay experts simply to produce documents. We pay them for their knowledge, judgement, diligence and willingness to stand behind their work.
If the result is wrong because they failed to exercise reasonable professional care, why should their liability end with an apology or a refund?
Then there is Snowy 2.0.
When this enormous pumped-hydro project was announced in 2017, Australians were told it would cost around $2 billion and begin operating in 2021.
The latest assessment, released in October 2026, puts the target cost at $22.2 billion, with a possible $25 billion outcome. Full commissioning has been pushed back to late 2029.
That's more than twelve times the original publicly announced figure.
Twelve times!
Now, I appreciate that Snowy 2.0 is a technically demanding project. Geological conditions are difficult. Labour and material costs change. Unexpected problems arise.
But surely that is precisely why we employ experts.
We don't need highly paid consultants to tell us how much a project would cost if everything went perfectly. We need them to assess what could go wrong, quantify the risks, provide realistic ranges and tell decision-makers when the uncertainties are too great.
The Australian National Audit Office has identified deficiencies in Snowy 2.0's project governance and risk management, with the financial risks increasingly falling on government.
Politicians certainly bear responsibility. They announce projects, approve expenditure and often have powerful incentives to present attractive cost estimates.
But somebody supplies the numbers.
Who produced the original estimates? What assumptions did they make? What warnings were given? Were those warnings communicated honestly to ministers and the public? And did anyone knowingly present an optimistic scenario as a reliable budget?
These questions deserve answers.
A twelvefold cost increase does not, by itself, prove negligence. But it surely justifies an independent examination of the original advice and the professional standards applied.
If the experts did their jobs properly and politicians ignored their warnings, we should know that too.
Accountability should follow the evidence, wherever it leads.
The consequences of questionable expert advice can extend far beyond financial losses.
During COVID, governments relied heavily on epidemiologists, public health officials and other specialists to justify extraordinary restrictions on everyday life.
Businesses closed. Schools shut. Families were separated. People lost jobs, savings and opportunities they could never recover.
Some restrictions undoubtedly helped reduce infections and deaths, particularly when the virus was poorly understood and vaccines were unavailable.
But that cannot be the end of the discussion.
Australia's independent COVID-19 Response Inquiry acknowledged the successes of the early response while identifying serious social, economic and health consequences, including damage to public trust.
The central question is not whether governments should have listened to experts. Of course they should have.
It is whether expert recommendations were subjected to sufficient scrutiny.
Were the benefits of particular restrictions weighed against their wider costs? Were alternative approaches considered? Were assumptions regularly reassessed as evidence changed? Were experts sufficiently candid about uncertainty?
And when restrictions continued long after the original circumstances had changed, who was responsible for demanding a fresh assessment?
There is an important distinction between a decision that proves wrong because circumstances were genuinely unknowable and one that proves wrong because contrary evidence was ignored.
The first is an unavoidable feature of decision-making under uncertainty.
The second may be a failure of professional responsibility.
We need to establish which was which, rather than automatically excusing every mistake as the unavoidable consequence of a crisis.
This brings me to what I believe is the heart of the problem.
People respond to incentives.
Suppose you are a consultant preparing a feasibility study for a government project.
You know the minister wants to announce it. You know your client would prefer a favourable assessment. You know a pessimistic report might make you unpopular and jeopardise future contracts.
And you know that if the project eventually costs three times as much as predicted, you are unlikely to suffer any personal consequences.
What incentive do you have to challenge the assumptions aggressively?
Professional pride? Ethics? Reputation?
All important. But are they enough?
Now imagine a different arrangement.
You know that if your estimates are found to have been prepared negligently, you could lose your professional accreditation, face substantial financial liability and suffer serious reputational damage.
If you knowingly falsify evidence or recklessly conceal critical risks, criminal penalties might follow.
Would you be more careful?
Would you insist on independent verification? Document your assumptions? Disclose worst-case scenarios? Refuse to sign off on figures you couldn't defend?
I suspect you would.
And that is precisely the point.
Accountability is not primarily about punishing mistakes after they happen. It is about creating incentives to prevent avoidable mistakes in the first place.
There is an obvious objection.
Experts cannot guarantee their forecasts. Economies change. Viruses mutate. Geological surprises happen. Even the most diligent professional can be wrong.
Absolutely.
I am not suggesting that every failed prediction should result in a lawsuit, much less a prison sentence.
That would discourage honest advice and encourage defensive, excessively cautious behaviour.
What I am suggesting is that professional responsibility should depend on the quality and integrity of the work, judged against what was reasonably knowable when the advice was given.
An expert who carefully investigates the evidence, discloses uncertainty, tests alternative scenarios and honestly communicates the risks should not be punished merely because events turn out differently.
But an expert who ignores obvious risks, presents speculation as certainty, fails to perform elementary checks or knowingly supplies misleading figures should face consequences proportionate to the misconduct and resulting harm.
We already recognise such distinctions in engineering, medicine, accounting and other professions.
Why should major public-policy and management advice be treated differently?
I would like to see several changes.
First, major government projects should require genuinely independent assessment of costs, benefits and risks before political commitments are made.
Second, every major consultancy report should be personally signed and certified by the senior professionals responsible for its conclusions.
Not merely issued under a corporate logo.
The signatories should identify themselves, their qualifications and their responsibilities, and formally certify that the report has been prepared with appropriate professional care, that material assumptions have been tested, and that significant uncertainties have been disclosed.
Their signatures should carry legal and professional consequences.
If serious negligence is subsequently established, those individuals should not be able to hide behind the corporate entity that employed them.
This would not make them guarantors of every forecast. It would make them personally accountable for the professional integrity of the work they have certified.
Imagine how much more carefully a consultant might examine a report if their own name, reputation, professional standing and financial liability were attached to it.
Third, assumptions, uncertainty ranges and significant dissenting opinions should be documented and, wherever possible, publicly available.
Fourth, professional advisers should face meaningful financial and disciplinary consequences where negligence or serious breaches of professional standards are established. Appropriate professional indemnity insurance should be part of the system, not a substitute for personal responsibility.
And finally, deliberate falsification, fraud or sufficiently reckless misconduct causing serious harm should be capable of attracting criminal sanctions, subject to proper investigation and due process.
Not because an expert's forecast was wrong.
Because the expert failed in a duty that society had every right to expect them to fulfil.
Politicians, of course, must also be accountable for decisions they make, particularly when they ignore professional warnings.
The expert's responsibility is to provide competent, honest advice.
The politician's responsibility is to decide what to do with it.
Neither should be able to hide behind the other.
Today, the rewards of expert advice are often private, while the consequences of defective advice fall on the public.
The consultant collects the fee. The politician gets the announcement. The project blows its budget. The taxpayer pays.
Or expert advice underpins a damaging public policy, and those who suffer its consequences are offered little more than an assurance that lessons have been learned.
That is not good enough.
We cannot eliminate uncertainty or punish every honest mistake. But we can demand professional diligence, transparency and accountability.
Make the experts put their names to their work. Make them responsible for the professional standards behind their conclusions. And when serious negligence is established, make the consequences real.
Because accountability does more than punish failure. It changes the incentives that lead to failure in the first place.
We expect that of the engineer who designs a bridge.
Why should we accept anything less from the experts whose advice can cost billions, destroy livelihoods or restrict our freedoms?
Grappy
