David Penberthy: Why politicians are refusing to download the Government’s COVID-19 tracing app
You’d think being a member of government would make a person want to set a good example during a pandemic. Instead, all we’re getting is tinfoil hat conspiracies and panicked denialists, writes David Penberthy.
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Given his headline-grabbing antics over the past couple of years you can see why former National Party Leader Barnaby Joyce has some reservations about having a tracking device installed on a mobile phone.
Its contents would make eyebrow-raising reading were they to fall into the wrong hands.
The point, of course, is that they won’t, unless Mr Joyce is worried that his movements might be the source of titillation for bored scientists working at our Communicable Diseases Network, looking for light relief from the drudgery of tracking the coronavirus.
Joyce is not the only federal MP who has qualms about downloading the COVID-19 app. An ABC survey of every federal MP found this week that a small group – let’s call them a cluster – within the Federal Coalition has decided that for privacy reasons or on the basis of other strange concerns they will not be downloading the app their own government wants everyone to download.
The other MPs who are refusing to do so are, not surprisingly, a roll-call of Australia’s political extremes. They serve as a handy reminder that for all their superficial disagreements on issues such as race and reconciliation, the Greens Party and One Nation are actually two peas in a pod when it comes to a lot of issues, such as free trade, or indeed tinfoil hat craziness about an app that is designed to do nothing other than stop us all from getting sick.
With an honourable mention to Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, the only Green with the maturity and intelligence to download the app, the remainder of her parliamentary gang have all said they will not be downloading the app because they don’t trust the government’s record on data management.
As for Pauline Hanson and Malcolm Roberts, we can only presume that they’ve said no because the app may be part of a sinister socialist plot to monitor all our movements and relay that information back to the United Nations in readiness for a One World Government. Or something like that.
Centre Alliance Senator Rex Patrick won’t download the app until such a time as he can be satisfied that it won’t be used to reveal the identities of the many “deep throats” he meets who are blowing the whistle on government mismanagement and malfeasance. My understanding is that the app only traces contact with people carrying the coronavirus, as opposed to Cabinet documents, but you can’t be too careful I suppose.
These conscientious objectors represent a cross-section of those in the broader community who have their own reservations about installing Scomo’s first app on their phone. It is the most perfect form of misplaced paranoia, which comes with the added benefit of being completely selfish.
This app has absolutely nothing to do with spying, with social control, with some draconian infringement on our freedom of movement or association. It is simply designed to keep track of our movements in relation to other people who have come down with COVID-19, so that in the event of future infections, we can avoid the creation of clusters or wider outbreaks by immediately identifying the source of infection and the other people who are also at risk. It is the most utterly benign innovation, and the sooner we all download it, the sooner we will be able to emerge from all this social distancing crap, of spending Mother’s Day driving around the block at staggered hourly intervals and waving at our grandmothers from afar.
The impetus for the creation of this app hasn’t come from politics but from science. It wasn’t the PM’s idea. It emanated from the chief medical officers and health experts who need a way to track the spread of the virus and cleverly harnessed technology to achieve that end. And as I said at the start, the info it gathers doesn’t end up at ASIO or with the AFP. The only people who can use it are the medicos and scientists at CDNA, Communicable Diseases Network Australia. If you’re worried about that, you’ve watched to many episodes of The X-Files.
Refusing to download this app is comparable to the arrogant refusal of a selfish few to immunise themselves and their kids, thumbing their nose at the scientific mainstream on the basis of spurious nonsense they’ve read online. It’s our social duty to download the damn thing in the same way it’s our social duty to make sure our kids get all their shots.
The most persuasive advocate of the app was one of the Government’s biggest critics, ACTU boss Sally McManus, who on downloading it herself said the Government could already spy on us anyway, whereas this app might do some good and save some lives.
Coverage of the app has seen some the dopiest journalism in the alternative press I have read in a long time, with politically-obsessed journos at fringe publications crapping on about how the Government’s historic lack of candour over the sports rorts affair meant they couldn’t be trusted.
These people should spend less time in Canberra and more time in Australia.
But by far the weirdest feature of the complaints about the app comes from people who will use Facebook to complain about it – a digital mega-business that has sold people’s personal information to a private company, Cambridge Analytica, for political use, and whose starting point when you set up a Facebook page is to ask your name, age, suburb, primary and high school, marital status, favourite movie/book, hobbies, and then urge you to upload pictures of yourself and your children.
Privacy died years ago when we leapt headlong into the world of Facebook. At least this app might stop us from dying in future.