Your core premise, "Who could have costed for covid?", misses the mark. No one needed to cost it, because we did not need to shut the economy and pay everyone to stay at home. We also did not need to close borders or implement lockdowns that destroyed commerce. So, the answer is that Covid should have cost us relatively little. Government's got excited with control and went into a hysteria of restrictions. We have numerous international examples of countries that did better than Austraila through Covid, with no loss of freedoms. Australia screwed up.
But, as it is, we do have the debt we have now, and we need to elect politicians who are prepared to be truly fiscally responsible (as well as protect our fundamental rights so Covid mistakes are never repeated). The Liberal Democrats are clearly the best party for this.
