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Tory Shepherd: Around the world, it’s people of colour, lower socio-economic demographics, and women who are being hit harder

Labelling Australia the Lucky Country wasn’t a compliment, writes Tory Shepherd. And there hasn’t been much luck to crow about for women, the poor and minorities lately anyway.

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It did feel, briefly, as though we were all in this together.

As though we had bonded in adversity as the coronavirus curled around the world.

Pundits also rolled out the phrase “lucky country”, early on, as though our space and sunshine would spare us.

But that phrase, taken from Donald Horne’s 1964 book, was meant to be an indictment.

“Australia is a lucky country, run by second-rate people who share its luck,” Horne argued, as he railed against parochialism and people who squandered that luck.

“Australia has not deserved its good fortune,” he wrote.

We’re not all in this together, now, and we don’t all feel as though we live in a lucky country.

Victoria has become a pariah state, and for its misfortune and its missteps it is now plagued by community transmissions. Untraceable spread of this plague.

As soon as sporadic border closures began, we were no longer all in this together.

We’re not all in this together with our healthcare workers. Nurses and doctors are putting themselves at risk every day.

A homeless man with a face mask under his chin is in Cali, Colombia. Picture: Luis Robayo/ AFP
A homeless man with a face mask under his chin is in Cali, Colombia. Picture: Luis Robayo/ AFP

Even if the personal protective equipment had been seamlessly rolled out, providing seamless protection against devilish droplets, they would still be exposed more.

According to the Medical Journal of Australia, there have been more than 500 healthcare worker infections in Australia. Some estimates put that higher.

We’re not all in it together with those trapped in aged-care homes, where those most vulnerable to infection are squished into restrictive abodes, often with under-trained, under-resourced staff.

I know I’m not in it together with people having to juggle work with homeschooling children.

I feel guilty (but secretly glad) that I have a warm, safe, quiet place to live. White-collar workers can complain about the ubiquitous Zoom meetings all they like, but it’s better than having to head into an abattoir, for example.

Or a retail position. (Or an aged-care facility. Or a hospital).

But on those Zoom meetings, there’s still a disparity.

The people who are nonchalant about an impromptu video catch-up tend to be those who have their own study, with a perfectly curated bookshelf.

Harder to juggle a space full of mess and kids.

Not to mention the gender “grooming gap”.

Blokes can Zoom without a second thought (mostly) while many of us have to swiftly powder, throw our hair into an acceptable shape, and blush.

Around the world, it’s people of colour, lower socio-economic demographics, and women who are being hit harder.

They’re more likely to have to head into a precarious workplace, to be in a caring role, to have more exposure to spittle.

Many of us could not imagine what many of the rest are having to do: Decide whether or not to get a test after a pesky cough, when a couple of weeks off work could mean gazing into the abyss of hunger, or homelessness.

The generations are not all in this together, although they’re all suffering. Older people are seeing their retirement investments smashed, with one study showing they’re three times more worried about their wealth than their health.

And younger people face the long tail of this recession.

They’re pulling out their super, ripping out their retirement savings.

You can’t blame them. The comfort of having a few thousand in the pocket in these uncertain times vastly outweighs any concerns about how much they’ll have at some unimaginable point in the future when they retire.

The extroverts and the introverts were arguably never in this together.

And those are not binary positions. An extrovert in South Australia who has mostly been able to see friends and family throughout this pandemic is in a very different position to an extrovert forced to self-quarantine.

And think of people in the UK, banned from seeing partners they didn’t live with.

Even the most introverted introvert would have suffered in Spain, where people were not even allowed to leave their houses for six weeks.

Introverts still need sunshine.

For decades to come we’ll be studying the different effects on kids.

Young children missing out on vital socialisation and getting home education of varying quality.

And older kids who don’t get to have critical rites of passage, whose schooling has been thrown into chaos.

The conspiracy theorists, the anti-maskers and the anti-vaxxers, are definitely not in this with us.

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Neither are those who think this is just a flu.

As for those who think we should just open up and sacrifice people on the altar of capitalism … well, they were never in this with the rest of us.

All of that is not to say that’s it’s everyone for themselves.

Rather, that we need to set aside childish, trite slogans for something more meaningful.

We need to tune into the note of civic duty, of selflessness that you could hear when London rang with bells and applause to thank the National Health Service workers.

Or when New Yorkers belted out tunes from their balconies.

We all need to hear the call to a greater good, instead of the siren song of rampant individualism and wheedling selfishness.

We are not “all in this together”, and this pandemic has cast a harsh light on the ways in which we are divided.

Australia has been lucky, but some are luckier than others.

Tory Shepherd
Tory ShepherdColumnist

Tory Shepherd writes a weekly column on social issues for The Advertiser. She was formerly the paper's state editor, and has covered federal politics, defence, space, and everything else important to SA.

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Original URL: https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/opinion/tory-shepherd-around-the-world-its-people-of-colour-lower-socioeconomic-demographics-and-women-who-are-being-hit-harder/news-story/0c65d761fbc17de89c616e068b37cdf5