Matthew Abraham: Neither Orwell, nor Lennon, had a clue about the strange days scheduled for 2021

We are approaching the point of no return. It won’t be long before trolley checks to see if our groceries are lockdown-approved, writes Matthew Abraham.

At any other time, the sudden unexplained appearance of a shiny new horse float in our street would seem passing strange. This is in Unley, not Oakbank, and the only clip-clopping we’ve ever heard around these parts is when a neighbour once organised pony rides for their bub’s first birthday knees-up.

But this is not any other time. We are now all players in the theatre of the absurd. The streets are dotted with caravans and boats, stage props for Life in Lockdown Town.

A flying saucer parked on the footpath would barely raise an eyebrow so why not a horse float? Where are the horses? Have the owners saddled up and ridden off into the sunlit uplands? Lucky them.

Besides, I much prefer it to the gargantuan, taxpayer-subsidised, luxury tradie utes that normally clog the neighbourhood. These are strange days indeed, as John Lennon put it. “Nobody told me there’d be days like these, strange days indeed, most peculiar, mama,” he sang.

Police watch cars in the kilometres-long queue for Covid tests at Victoria Park Tuesday. Picture Dean Martin

Lennon recorded Nobody Told Me shortly before his murder in 1980 but it wasn’t released until 1984, by his widow Yoko Ono. In George Orwell’s novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, that year was supposed to see western society’s freedoms crushed under totalitarian rule, with mass surveillance and rules defining every aspect of daily life. Truth and facts were distorted and manipulated by the state.

Neither Orwell, nor Lennon, had a clue about the strange days indeed scheduled for 2021. On day one of SA’s third lockdown last Wednesday, a mate innocently went to his local Bunnings for some of those biodegradable bags for the compost bucket.

It was easier and, he figured, safer than touring the empty shelves at the local supermarket. Wearing his mask, he flashed the QR code. Two staff, one with a clipboard, quizzed him on why he needed the bags.

They explained this was to make sure shoppers were only buying “essential” goods and, they assured him, police were checking their records.

I’m not arguing that we’re living in a totalitarian regime where our rights have been forcibly taken away, our movements monitored and our lives controlled by the state, because most of us have willingly surrendered many of our rights in the fight against Covid-19.

Professor Nicola Spurrier. Picture: Naomi Jellicoe

SA’s chief health officer Nicola Spurrier has hammered the fact the virus doesn’t have legs so if we stay at home it can’t go anywhere. It’s a brilliantly clear and simple message. Let’s all take it to heart, please.

But the economy doesn’t have legs either. If we all stay home, it stops dead in its tracks.

We can’t ignore the fact that with each lockdown, the restrictions have begun to pile higher and higher, like a game of Jenga. Pull one brick out and the whole tower collapses.

Do police really need to know if you’re buying compost bin bags at the local hardware store?

How long before they start rummaging through your supermarket trolley checking for “essentials”?

Do you really need this block of chocolate, sir? What about this box of Cheezels, madam?

Surely it’d be more productive if, rather than snooping through our shopping lists, more police were engaged in tracking down drivers who are unlicensed and behind the wheel of unregistered cars.

These drivers, usually drunk or high on crystal meth, cause a disproportionate number of road deaths, injuries and misery.

The pattern of state-imposed restrictions may be reaching a point of no return.

We need to trust our democratically elected governments and our non-elected health and police officials.

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t question the absurd.

NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announces that the quarantine free travel arrangement with Australia will be suspended for eight weeks. Picture: Getty Images

Recently, NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, responding to a Covid rumour, told the media that “unless you hear it from us, it’s not the truth”.

“We will continue to be your single source of truth,” she said. “Everything else you see (take it with) a grain of salt. We will continue to provide everything you need to know.”

PM Ardern is not a dictator but this is the language of dictatorships. A string of royal commissions has repeatedly demonstrated that governments are not the single source of truth. They often distort the facts and sometimes lie. They need to be probed, question and even annoyed.

Before he starts poking through our shopping trolleys, Premier Steven Marshall needs to tread carefully.

Former Labor senator and powerbroker Graham Richardson wrote recently that Premier Marshall should win the election next March as long as he doesn’t “frighten the horses”.

Best to make sure they haven’t already bolted, then.