David Penberthy: It’s the great ‘abundance of caution’ cliche used again to defend dumb conduct

We now have a less dangerous strain that almost everyone is surviving, but the “abundance of caution” remains, writes David Penberthy.

Probably the worst feature of the announcement that the SACE graduates merit awards have been cancelled due to Covid-19 is the sham promise that the ceremony will be replaced with a “creative online celebration”.

Kill me now.

If the last two years has shown us anything it is that online “celebrations” serve principally as a melancholy reminder of the vast superiority of real-life in-person celebrations.

After going to one “virtual” drinks with friends on a Friday night early in the pandemic I tapped out after half an hour and vowed never to take part in one again. There was a sad neediness in everyone’s voices, all of us pretending to be having a fun time, when the reverse was obviously true, to the extent that anything intelligible could be gleaned from having a dozen-odd pissed people shouting over the top of each other on Microsoft Teams.

So to the 1016 smart young South Australians who will now celebrate their academic achievements via a lame Teams gathering, all I will say is brace yourselves for an hour to forget.

Darcy Byrne-Jones of the Power is tackled by Changkuoth Jiath of the Hawks during the 2022 AFL Round 02 match between the Port Adelaide Power and the Hawthorn Hawks at Adelaide Oval on March 26. Picture: Sarah Reed/AFL Photos via Getty Images

The biggest problem, of course, is that the annual gathering at Government House has been cancelled at all. And again, the best contrast as to the stupidity and hypocrisy of it all comes from the world of sport.

If only these class-topping kids had used their natural intelligence and application to come up with the following Plan B, where they gather, not at Government House, but down the road at the Adelaide Oval wearing AFL jumpers. Forget just inviting mum and dad, they could all have been handed their SACE certificates in front of 52,000 screaming fans of excellence in education.

Sacred Heart College principal Steve Byrne. Picture: Supplied.

What an insulting irony. We junk an awards presentation that is a celebration of excellence, yet move heaven and earth to stage tonight’s Showdown, which based on the form of our two currently hapless sides, risks being one of the greatest celebrations of mediocrity the AFL has ever seen.

The adults who made this decision – and those who have done nothing to challenge or reverse it – should all hang their heads.

What about these lame thoughts from SACE.

“Although we will not be able to celebrate their significant achievements together, this decision by no means takes away from their well-deserved triumph,” it offered by way of an empty platitude.

“The impact of Covid-19 has continued to push the event further back into the time of year where the weather is very unreliable, and it is not suitable for an outdoor event at Government House.”

How is it “not suitable”? I would have thought the words they were looking for there are “perfectly suitable”. I simply cannot believe that this organisation folded so lamely and uncreatively over an event it should die in a ditch to hold. Are they seriously saying it cannot one staged at all in an outdoor setting? They really should know the answer to that question, because they held it successfully last year.

I attended that SACE ceremony because my daughter had won a school prize for geography. It’s worth making the point here too, for the benefit of the “toughen up, they’ll get over it” jerks in the comments section, that you don’t win these prizes because you’re lucky. You win them because you work really hard and apply yourself.

That’s what makes you the best at something. It is the basis on which you get an award that others do not. A judgmental concept I know, and one which jars with the everyone’s-a-winner ethos these days, but hey, call me old fashioned.

Being presented with that honour meant a lot to my daughter, it meant a lot to her mum and me, and the truly baffling thing is that last year’s event was held at a time when Covid was more alarming and unpredictable than it is today.

Fast forward a year, when we now have a less dangerous strain that almost everyone is surviving doing the rounds, and they can it?

Chief public health officer Professor Nicola Spurrier with Police Commissioner Grant Stevens, and education department CEO Rick Persse on Wednesday. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Naomi Jellicoe

This episode is another infuriating example of that great Covid cliche “an abundance of caution” being used to defend conduct that is plainly dumb.

It is also a reminder that teenagers have been uniquely and negatively affected by the management of this pandemic, with no lobby group advocating their cause.

I completely agree with Sacred Heart College principal Steve Byrne, who said this week he was perplexed by this decision and urged that it be reviewed. Byrne, who has been commendably outspoken about South Australia’s absurd rules governing school boarders, made an excellent point about the blase manner in which adults have shredded so many events that are landmark moments in young people’s lives. “We have to get these special moments in young people’s lives celebrated and recognised,” he said.

“It’s a really important rite of passage in their schooling for students and their families.”

Yet other groups have gone along with SACE, including even the SA Association of School Parent Communities, who said “the health of everyone is the main priority”.

Chilling isn’t it. You can see the headlines now. HUNDREDS DEAD IN SOCIALLY DISTANCED OUTDOOR AWARD PRESENTATION.

As I write this my other child is locked in his room with an eminently manageable and completely survivable bout of corona.

The first casualty in all that is his schooling, with the mandated ban on his return until next week, by which time the only thing he will have died from is boredom.

It is one hell of an experiment we are putting our kids through. Perhaps we can reassure them that up-ending their social lives, denying them all those landmark moments we took for granted, and rendering their “education” a few garbled hours a day over Microsoft Teams was merely the necessary price of acting out of an abundance of caution.