Most people will have heard of the book written by the Australian writer and social critic Donald Horne called "The Lucky Country". In much the same way that the Bruce Springsteen song "Born in the USA" was misinterpreted as a patriotic anthem, for years after its publication, politicians and the media constantly quoted the title of the book to spruik how fortunate Australia and Australians were to live in a country like this, when in reality, the message Horne was trying to convey about 1960s Australia was quite acerbic and critical.
The title of the book derives from perhaps its best-known passage at the start of the final chapter:
"Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck. It lives on other people's ideas, and, although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise.”
Horne’s point was that unlike other industrialised nations who used innovation to build wealth and whose democracy was hard-won off the back of centuries of struggle, Australia had been passed down its institutions from Great Britain fully formed and because rich natural resources and immigration ensured economic prosperity, its leaders were content to rest on their laurels and not pursue innovative means of generating prosperity or improving governance.
I mention all this because as an increasingly anxious Melbourne resident, I’ve been tuning in more and more to coverage of events overseas to see what the future might look like based on the experience of countries who properly managed their vaccination rollout, and to look at the international reaction to what is going on back home. Concerningly, I observed that what is happening in highly vaccinated places like England, Ireland, New York State, Germany and Israel couldn’t be more different to what occurring back in Australia.
Apart from the obvious difference in that society has more or less fully opened up, what strikes you is the balance, both in terms of ongoing handling of the pandemic and in the media coverage. Yes, COVID-19 is still around and everyone is aware of the need to be vigilant about outbreaks, but when these inevitably occur, they are being dealt with by re-introduction of fairly non-intrusive measures such as mask wearing indoors, limits on venues and mandatory check ins. COVID-19 and its infamous Delta variant still of course make the news, but there are none of the grim-faced daily 11am media conferences from national or regional governments that you get here announcing the daily caseload and threatening their citizens with punishment if they don’t do what they’re told.
Even in a place like Israel whose government is not always known for being considered about things, where vaccine efficacy is tapering off and where cases have climbed back up to a 7 day average of 6,000 per day (to put that in perspective, on a per capita basis that is 15 times the 7 day average of the current NSW outbreak), the sort of measures adopted in Europe are being used but there is no serious talk of further lockdowns. The authorities have taken the view that as long as the health system can cope with the influx of patients, then with a few curbing measures, society can continue to function as normal and it will only be when the hospitals look like being overwhelmed will they look at hard lockdown again.
As for the commentary about Australia, that’s changed significantly from 15 months ago when our pandemic management was one of the most admired in the world. Now we’re largely viewed with a mixture of bafflement, pity and derision. On that score, things hit a low point the other night when the Fox News host Tucker Carlson, himself one of the most ridiculous people to ever sit behind a microphone, publicly ridiculed Daniel Andrews for his press conference earlier in the week where he told people they had to drink alcohol through their mask. And much though I can’t stand anything to do with Fox News, I kind of have to say to Tucker – fair comment.
But digressions like this aside, people overseas including many Australian expats are becoming increasingly dumbfounded and asking questions like, why the hell are only 25% of the population fully vaccinated? What on Earth are they doing locking down most of the country again with so few cases? And how did a country that at first seemed to have got things right manage to find itself in position where absurd things such as the Prime Minister finding himself indefinitely stranded in the Lodge due to an order from the ACT Chief Minister can happen?
All very good and pertinent questions. Which is why, when I got to thinking, Donald Horne was right 57 years ago and nothing has changed since. We’ve landed where we are because we have second rate leadership in this country, and not just federally, but across all levels of government. Although I have to say the only gripes I’ve had with our local council during all of this was when they put up our rates 10% at a time when we weren’t sure if there would be any household income coming in, and then halving our garbage collection days at a time when we’ve been stuck at home under house arrest for 230 days.
To understand how the country has wound up in such an appalling downward spiral, and to appreciate just how poorly state and federal governments have behaved, its necessary to look at the past 15 months and re-visit what’s happened since COVID-19 first sneaked ashore.
At first, when no government understood exactly what they were dealing with, I don’t think anyone really quibbled with the first 8-10 week lockdown, and despite what seemed at the time to be interim border closures, the different states all seemed to be in lockstep with the Federal government on how to handle things. Also the newly-convened national cabinet appeared to be working well.
However despite the praise that came Australia’s way, to paraphrase Horne again, I would argue strongly that the success in bringing the initial outbreak under control so quickly compared to other countries was largely due to Australia’s luck, not due to adept management.
First, as an island country, we were able to close the borders very quickly and efficiently to any foreign people bringing in the virus. Secondly, the relatively sparse population density outside the capital cities meant that regional areas had very few cases. Thirdly and luckily for the state and territory governments, compared to Europe and the USA, Australians tend to be a fairly compliant and obedient lot who for the most part were prepared to abide by the lockdown orders which helped drive cases down. Little were we to know how those same governments would soon take advantage of our docility time and time again.
But in July, the sense of national unity quickly began to unravel. Once it became apparent that the Victorian government had (a) hired a bunch of untrained sex-pests to run hotel quarantine, (b) taken the view that a few A4 pads and crayons ought to work just fine for contact tracing; and (c) appointed a doe-eyed himbo as Chief Medical Officer who didn’t think e-mails with the heading “URGENT – Re: HOTEL QUARANTINE” were worthy of his attention, then the sort of myopic parochial mentality that led to states building incompatible rail gauges 130 years ago quickly came to the fore. Border closures became more or less permanent, families living in different were inhumanely separated and national cabinet dissolved into the chaotic unworkable state that it remains to this day.
It was also around this time that a sick conceited fantasy started in Western Australia and New Zealand which would soon spread its way across the whole continent. That was, notwithstanding (a) the highly infectious nature of COVID-19 and the strong likelihood that it would mutate to become even more infectious; (b) thousands of people continuing to come and go from the country each week despite ostensibly closed borders; (c) a quarantine system that was not, and remains to this day, unfit for purpose; and (d) the pandemic raging unchecked in many other parts of the world, Australia was somehow capable of eradicating COVID-19 on these shores, and therefore, that’s what we should strive to do no matter how brutal the methods or the cost.
Completely insane that this sounds when you put it in those terms, nonetheless all other governments were ultimately forced to conform to Western Australia’s approach. Otherwise, as “Doe-Eyes” put it when trying to justify keeping Victoria in lockdown last year far beyond the point where the World Health Organisation said it was safe to re-open, other states would never re-open to each other while there was a single case of community transmission.
However, as we all now, with the exception of our cousins across the ditch, most other developed economies didn’t take that approach and decided once cases reduced to a low enough level, limited opening up would occur. They did this understanding that (a) other things in society are quite important other than stopping people contracting COVID-19 at any cost; (b) the consequences of lockdowns are devastating socially and economically; (c) porous national borders meant eradication was unfeasible and (d) after a while, citizens would no longer stand for lockdown and there would be explosions of civil unrest.
Of course, this balancing act was carried out with varying degrees of success until vaccines became available – not so well in the UK, USA, Spain and Italy but quite well in Germany, Austria and Scandinavia. However at least they all accepted the basic premise that complete eradication of COVID-19 was futile, some serious illness and loss of life was going to be inevitable with a nasty virus like this, but other things in life matter as well and that as governments, they needed to take a more a nuanced approach which still protected public health as far as possible but spared society the crippling strain of lockdowns as much as they could.
But perhaps the most infuriating thing about governments in this country is that despite blathering on about how much they understand that lockdowns hurt, they have been frustratingly slow to adopt measures which might render them less necessary.
The botched Federal Government vaccine roll out is the obvious one, but there are many other examples. The failure to immediately start construction of dedicated outdoor facilities like Howard Springs which has worked exceptionally well. The failure to engage quickly and properly with migrant communities which were the source of the big outbreaks in Victoria and NSW. The Stone Age nature of the initial Victorian contract tracing system, and the inexplicable delays here in both implementing a QR code system and adopting the method of tracing “contacts of contacts”, which could well have brought last year’s outbreak under control weeks sooner and saved hundreds of lives and thousands more livelihoods.
I could go on and on, but undoubtedly the most despicable failing of all is the undermining by government officials both state and Federal of the one vaccine that was widely available from day 1 in Astra-Zeneca. Dr Jeanette Young standing up at a press conference in Queensland and deliberately trying to destroy public confidence in the vaccine should have led to her immediate dismissal, but of course we now live in a country where unelected public health officials wield absolute power over all our lives, so that was never going to happen.
However, I couldn’t help but idly wonder whether at any point in her life, she had been prescribed the contraceptive pill, which as any GP will happily tell you, is 200 times as likely to cause blood clots than the Astra-Zeneca virus. And I also can’t help but wonder how many of the people who have died recently in NSW might still be alive if the smear campaign against Astra-Zeneca hadn’t happened and we were a lot further along in the vaccination programme than what we are.
So where to from here? I’m hopeful more than expectant that the emergence of the Delta strain will finally puncture the deluded bubble of the zero-COVID zealots who have seized control of the country and put just on half of its people under indefinite house arrest. And as a Melbourne resident, while I am desperate for the current lockdown to end, I’m not so certain that things won’t go the way of Sydney. There are a few reasons for that.
First is obviously the fact that the Delta strain is about 2.5 times more infectious than the strain that so flummoxed the Andrews government last year.
Secondly, its possible that as more and more people become vaccinated, people are less likely to get symptoms and therefore not be aware that they are infectious, hence increasing the potential for the disease to be passed on unawares.
But thirdly, and probably most significantly, as lockdowns go on and on, civil disobedience will only get worse and worse. This is because in an extremely rare display of empathy by a Victorian government minister last week, Martin Foley noted that people are thoroughly sick of lockdowns. And boy, is he right.
After 230 days of lockdown, parents of school-aged children have had a gutful of having their kids’ schooling foisted on them by the state government while trying to also manage a career and a relationship, and feeling like they are failing at all three.
Women stuck at home with abusive partners must be completely at the end of their tether.
And people who’ve had their businesses and livelihoods shredded because they’ve been forced to put up with the deluded fantasy of a zero-COVID country must be absolutely furious.
And to cap things off, the increase in disobedience will probably be exacerbated now that Andrews is back in charge after his tumble down the stairs. Because there are a lot of people out there who will no longer listen to a thing he says.
Imagine if you were someone who’d had their business destroyed or livelihood ruined as a direct result of gross negligence by the Victorian government in managing hotel quarantine. And then imagine watching on as the person in charge of that government lied to an enquiry and consequently escaped any sanction for their actions (karmic fall down the stairs aside). And then to add the icing on the cake, gives himself and his colleagues a hefty pay rise. You would be completely livid, and you can fully understand why they would take no notice of someone who has proven themselves so utterly undeserving of respect.
I hope that’s not the case however, and while the early signs are not good (as it’s hard to see the likes of Mark McGowan pivoting overnight from a zero-COVID position to one where even at an 80% vaccination rate, the number of daily cases will dwarf what’s happening in NSW right now) I genuinely hope that the “treaty” brokered recently by the state and federal governments concerning gradual opening up is adhered to. Or that if the states renege, Australians shake off their political torpor and take to the streets to demand that they do.
The alternative of not living with the virus and allowing normality to return is too baleful to contemplate. Life in some nightmare defeated shadow country where you are locked up half the year, where we are abandoned by our allies who think we have lost our collective mind, where our young people flee to Europe and America in search of a future where they can live freely, and where the government gradually grows broke to the point where it can no longer afford armed forces, whereupon the Chinese government takes the opportunity it has been waiting for and sends in its troops to seize our iron ore mines.
If that happens, then it will come as no comfort to know that Donald Horne is looking down at us from author heaven shaking his head and saying, I tried to warn you about this stuff, but you just didn’t listen.
