Editorial: Honesty is the best policy when it comes to restrictions
Hopefully Ms Palaszczuk has now learnt that communicating honestly with people is the best way to bolster faith, rather than frustration, in restrictions.
IT’S now been 353 days since Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk declared a State of Emergency to respond to concerns about a global pandemic emerging from the central China city of Wuhan.
You’d hope in the time since she might have learnt a thing or two about how best to communicate with people amid heightened concerns about coronavirus.
Unfortunately, it appears that hasn’t occurred. Queenslanders were treated like mugs and kept in the dark over the weekend about the path out of the sudden three-day lockdown of Greater Brisbane.
On Sunday, Ms Palaszczuk and her Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young refused to discuss whether the lockdown of two million people would end as scheduled at 6pm yesterday – offering instead only a vague reference about “proposed steps” to come. Unacceptable.
The government should know by now that the best way to ensure people understand and adhere to what are extraordinary restrictions on their liberties is an inclusive approach to communicating.
The finer details of these “proposed steps” might not have been decided at the time but so what? If that was the case then just say so.
Instead Ms Palaszczuk adopted a paternalistic approach of refusing to provide people – whose lives and livelihoods had been disrupted – with even basic information.
A cynic might suggest this afforded the Premier with a far bigger moment in the limelight when she made yesterday’s announcement that the lockdown would be lifted but mask wearing would continue for the next 10 days. But holding back detail only risks breeding cynicism about Ms Palaszczuk’s motives – and causes even greater disruption because it means businesses can’t properly plot a path forward.
Thankfully the penny appears to have dropped after this column chastised the Premier yesterday for her approach. Ms Palaszczuk and Dr Young yesterday clearly detailed not only what restrictions would be in force over the next 10 days but what life will be like after that. This was a welcome change.
While the three-day lockdown and the decree about continued mask wearing will have their share of critics, they are an acceptable inconvenience in the face of the risk posed by the far more contagious UK strain of coronavirus.
Residents of Greater Brisbane demonstrated a willingness to follow the government-imposed lockdown over the weekend, with very few reported cases of people flagrantly ignoring the rules. (Almost all even adhered to the bizarre rule that masks must be worn while behind the wheel of their own private vehicles!)
And so the good people of Brisbane will likely to do the same when it comes to wearing a mask over the next 10 days during visits to shopping centres and supermarkets or while catching public transport.
They’ll do this because it has been clearly communicated to them that this will take the region past a full incubation period since a hotel cleaner was diagnosed with having contracted the UK strain.
They know it will limit the risk of the virus spreading while authorities continue to conduct the necessary contact tracing – and that after those 10 days we can get back to our COVID-normal lives.
Detailing the path ahead – and beyond – yesterday did not compromise the government’s objectives. Quite the opposite. Similarly, the development and communication of a nationally consistent plan for managing COVID-19 clusters – as business is today calling for – would do much to assist the community in getting through the rest of this year.
Hopefully Premier Palaszczuk has now discovered that communicating honestly with the people she leads is the best way to keep their faith. Patting them on the head and saying “don’t you worry about that until I’m ready to tell you” simply doesn’t cut it.
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