David Penberthy: Why did friends and family come last in lockdown?
Australians have dutifully followed the rules of COVID-19 to a tee. But as the country begins to reopen, it’s become clear just how much money – and not family – talks, asks David Penberthy.
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I live in a state that has recorded just two cases of coronavirus in the past six weeks, both of them imported from outside of our borders.
Yet it is was only two weeks ago that my small extended family – my wife and four kids, my parents, my one sister, her husband and my only niece and nephew – could have our first legally-mandated 12-person get-together since February as a result of what until last fortnight was a 10-person limit on social gatherings.
The past few months have demonstrated that Australian families, couples and private individuals need their own lobby group.
Political discussion and media coverage of the impact of the pandemic has focused inordinately on the demands of everyone from the AFL and NRL to every industry organisation demanding greater freedoms on account of their indisputable value to the community.
Yet the things that really matter most in life are family and friends. We have spent more time talking about whether we can go to the footy than we have about whether we can have our extended family over for a feed.
And even though I’m a bit of a heathen, if I were religiously inclined, I would feel somewhat miffed that the likes of sports administrators Peter V’landys and Gillon McLachlan have got carte blanche to talk about the impact of the pandemic on elite football, while a couple of million parishioners have been quietly wondering when they’ll be able to go to church again.
As a society we have been much more attuned towards discussing the impact of the pandemic on organisations than we have on individuals.
Further, the zeal with which the most doctrinaire premiers and police commissioners imposed social bans suggests there was something almost thrilling for those in power about exercising such unprecedented absolute power.
Seeing Victorian Premier Dan Andrews defending his dopey golf ban, and initially tell Victorian couples living separately that they couldn’t even visit each other of an evening for a bit of raunchy lockdown action, or NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard lecturing people about staying away from beaches and parks when his own department was making a total hash of the Ruby Princess … all these things had an air of easy authoritarianism about them, even if they were delivered with the hangdog regret of a politician saying that they, too, were hurting at having to make the tough decisions.
I was a dutifully compliant citizen, but it has felt to me there is a genuine sluggishness over the removal of restrictions that involve quality of life.
Golf aside, it never made sense to me as a South Australian that any state would have declared the beaches off-limits to individuals for a quiet stroll or swim, or that national parks would close.
Even the closure of local playgrounds was mystifying, especially when they were closed at the same time schools remained open (except in Victoria), forcing us to reflect on the inexplicable logic of a 500-strong schoolyard being safe but five kids sharing a slippery dip a recipe for disaster. And even though the schools have been full, it won’t be until June 29 that school formals are allowed to be held.
One of the weirder features of the lockdown was one that, as the father of two boys aged five and two, became a cause of great angst at our place. And that was the closure of zoos, which are almost exclusively outdoor institutions, equipped with public address systems and high staffing numbers to manage crowds, and large cafes and gift shops where numbers can be easily managed in according with social distancing.
Yet when Scott Morrison announced the three-step pathway out of the lockdown just over a month ago, zoos were listed alongside brothels and nightclubs for consideration for a possible limited reopening in stage three.
It’s only this Monday that my local zoo will finally re-open, albeit with a limit of 1000 visitors a day in a place that’s got the capacity to hold 5000 at a safe distance.
Like pretty much every other Australian, my whole approach to the lockdown has been to shrug my shoulders and swallow every key recommendation from our chief medical officers, figuring they’re the experts, not me, and that the sooner we all hunker down the sooner we can emerge the other side.
The fact we all collectively behaved that way is one of the key reasons Australia has done so well.
But I’ll be honest, I’m over it. I’m over it for a couple of reasons. One is the protests a few weeks ago, which despite a few cases in Victoria appear to have been staged with no mass outbreak. The other reason is the international comparison between low-infection Australia, and the many countries with much higher rates of infection which are moving just as swiftly as we are, or in some cases even faster, to wind back restrictions.
A bunch of mates organised our first counter meal in four months a couple of Thursdays ago at one of our favourite pubs. The poor publican spent most of the night running around like a blue-arsed fly frantically counting customers in his three rooms to make sure he didn’t get busted for exceeding the 20-person a room limit.
I wonder if he had 61 people in those three rooms whether we would have been any more unsafe than with 60 people in there.
Statistically, it now feels like the act of catching an Uber to the pub, and crossing the road to catch one home six pints later, was packed with more danger than the prospect of respiratory collapse. So too with getting the family over for a meal, and even hugging each other on arrival.
I’m no epidemiologist but I know impatience when I see it, and I am seeing a lot of it now.