Opinion: How Covid-19 has changed the Lucky Country as we know it

Australia is becoming unrecognisable compared to the place where most of us grew up, writes Peter Gleeson.

Australia is starting to become a very different place to the one in which most of us grew up, and it’s a change brought on almost exclusively by the coronavirus pandemic.

This pandemic has irrevocably changed the economic, geopolitical, health and welfare parameters to which we have become accustomed.

Protests in the streets are now as common as a meat pie at the footy, and that’s if you can even get to the game because of lockdowns.

People are being refused entry into some states to see loved ones, despite the most extreme and precarious of circumstances, handed a red card by overzealous health officials.

Yet “celebrities’’ get a free pass and do not go to jail.

Individual state leaders are taking snide and unnecessary pot shots at each other over who is better at handling the crisis.

Cops are allegedly trying to smuggle loved ones over the border, and you can get 50,000 to a footy game but they won’t let you have a concert for 1000 people.

Some businesses have never been busier, while others wither on the vine, victims of border closures and lockdowns.

The regions, in particular, have been treated poorly by decision-makers.

But the most real and obvious change comes in the way we are being governed, specifically on Covid-19 policy.

In Queensland, it’s the land of the free but at a big cost to business, which has been marooned from the rest of the country.

It’s particularly systemic to the tourism industry, which is on its knees and a closure of borders over the summer holidays will send many to the wall.

Annastacia Palaszczuk has one KPI – to keep Delta out – and that’s how she and her minders approach every day.

State leaders and the Prime Minister at National Cabinet

Queenslanders, unlike those in NSW and Victoria, are living virtually a normal life, with all freedoms and liberties intact, and of course, no massive spike in virus numbers or deaths.

And the public are giving that strategy a big thumbs up.

In NSW, the situation is much more fluid and it is clear Premier Gladys Berejiklian has taken the approach that Covid-19 is here to stay, and we must learn to live with it and get on with life.

She knows there will be more death, more heartache but the alternative is to watch the economy crumble.

Melbourne is about to secure the title of the world’s most locked down city, yet Premier Dan Andrews is pressing ahead with a business road map to open up the state.

The only problem is he’s too slow and even the powerful CFMEU has had enough of his disingenuity.

In Western Australia, leader Mark McGowan has become a rock star for keeping the community safe and turning Perth into a fortress.

The end result for Australians is that travel is now risky, both in getting home without getting stuck, or contracting the virus.

It will keep the majority of Australians at home this Christmas-new year holidays, and many families will be apart.

The mental health challenges have never been more serious.

For Canberra, this has been the most disruptive, challenging political era of our times.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison faces his own domestic dramas at home, while entering into new strategic relationships with the US and the UK to bolster our military capability.

There’s an old Chinese curse that says: “May you live in interesting times.’’

They certainly need look no further than the great pandemic of the 21st century.