Pandemic PPE: how Australia entrusted a small-time retailer with $100m and got 46m unusable masks

Questions have been raised over the due diligence applied to PPE contracts in the early days of the Covid pandemic that cost the Australian taxpayer $100m and delivered little of use. Illustration: Victoria Hart/Guardian Design

In April 2020, with Australia gripped by the pandemic’s early, frenzied stages, a group of doctors wrote an alarming letter to the then prime minister, Scott Morrison.

Frontline medical staff, they warned, were being placed in significant danger by the lack of quality personal protective equipment.