Christopher Pyne: 2020 hasn’t just been rotten due to a pandemic

The year 2020 has been shocking, rotten and depressing. Christopher Pyne reflects on a horror year – and what comes next.

I hate cliches, especially hackneyed ones, as much as the next (insert gender-­neutral description here), but I wish I had a dollar for ­everyone who’s said to me as December approached, “I can’t wait for this year to be over.” Am I right, or am I right?

This year has been the worst in memory. Like many people, I was ­really looking forward to 2020.

The twenty noughties sounded weird and the twenty teens just sounded peculiar, so the idea of a ­decade with a correct-sounding ­ending, such as the twenty twenties, suited me rather well.

I turned 53 in 2020. Hard to ­believe I know, but it’s true – I was in parliament for 26 years, that’s why it feels like I should be so much older.

I planned this year as the start of a great couple of decades for me and my brood.

Well, like most people, those thoughts turned to custard when ­allegedly someone ate a pangolin, was scratched or bitten by a bat, or however the virus emerged in Wuhan.

The world didn’t even get out of January without the coronavirus ­pandemic dominating the news and then the year. And it still is!

So far, almost 62 million people have contracted COVID-19 and one and a half million have died – about which we are aware.

I suspect the number is far higher in the developing world. We will doubtless never know the real death toll.

I’m certain less transparent and less democratic nations with a state-run press, rather than a free one, are suppressing the figures too.

So far, almost 62 million people have contracted COVID-19 and one and a half million have died – about which we are aware. Picture: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

It will be hard to get the images of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson looking drawn and wan after recovering from COVID-19 out of my mind for some time.

Let alone the gasping pleas of those with the virus begging ­governments to help them in countries such as Italy, Spain, France and the United States.

COVID-19 brought us the worst unemployment rates since the Great Depression in the 1930s; queues of jobseekers registering with Centrelink for government benefits; surplus government budgets eviscerated overnight to be replaced with crippling deficits and debt; empty airports; streets of Adelaide that looked like a ghost town; an unrecognisable tourism and hospitality sector; and a Christmas where children can’t get within 1.5m of Santa Claus, let alone sit on his knee.

And that’s just a few things on the list of many other even worse deprivations.

But 2020 hasn’t just been rotten due to a pandemic.

It was a shocker from the start. Australia endured some of the worst wildfires in our recorded history, including our beloved Kangaroo Island and the Adelaide Hills.

Kangaroo Island was ravaged by bushfires in early 2020. Picture: Peter Parks / AFP

New South Wales was ravaged by fires up and down the coast that seemed to burn for weeks on end.

It seemed unbelievable to be ­witnessing Victorians in Gippsland being evacuated by sea from places surrounded by out-of-control bushfires. Mother Nature followed up with floods across New South Wales in the first half of the year.

The relationship between Australia and China deteriorated markedly in 2020.

Just last week, China slapped new, onerous tariffs on parts of the wine ­industry’s exports to China that will damage the livelihoods of tens of thousands of decent, hard working Australians, especially in the regions.

They weren’t the first sign of ­economic pressure being placed on Australia by China.

The attitude of the government in China has affected education, tourism, lobsters, beef and other fresh ­produce, coal and iron ore.

The tensions with China have ­bubbled away on the surface for most of the year and will take a herculean effort from the Australian Government to get on an even keel in 2021.

If all that wasn’t bad enough, 2020 brought us the surreal spectacle of the United States presidential election.

Images of President-elect Joe Biden and Vice-President-elect ­Kamala Harris in black masks ­addressing gatherings of vehicles in parking lots and drive-in theatres competed with footage of President Donald Trump dancing to the Village People’s disco hit “YMCA” at rallies of adoring fans with barely a mask or a metre between them.

President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. Picture: Win McNamee/Getty Images/AFP

It still isn’t over.

Despite what electoral officials across America have described as one of the best run and least corrupted presidential election ever, Trump is still insisting the whole election has been a hoax.

Does that mean it didn’t happen? Did we dream the whole thing? Do we wake up and have to do it all over again.

Cue sensible people everywhere running screaming from the room pulling clumps of hair out by the roots.

So yes, like all those people who keep saying to me “I can’t wait for this year to be over”, I too am looking ­forward to Christmas, the end of the year and the start of 2021.

It couldn’t possibly be as bad as 2020. Could it?