A damning report on Australia's COVID-19 response called Fault Lines that began in April has found Australia failed its most vulnerable and its bureaucratic decisions lacked compassion.

Funded partly by Andrew Forrest's Minderoo Foundation, the report says schools should've remained opened and border closures and lockdowns were the result of policy failures, with decisions made in the "fog of uncertainty".

Western Sydney University chancellor and former department of prime minister and cabinet secretary Peter Shergold found the economic and social havoc wreaked by government “overreach” found border closures were also avoidable at the pandemic height.

"It was not transparent how decisions were being made, you know how people were being able to go overseas or not, or go across borders," he told Liam Bartlett on 6PR Mornings.

"It seemed to be very inflexible, and it did lack compassion and indeed common sense in many instances."

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