Lisa Wilkinson advocating for Covid rules divorced from reality

Channel 10’s Minister for Health spent the weekend penning her latest doomer manifesto. Why does she wish to stay under the Covid doona? James Morrow asks.

Those doonas must be pretty snugly on the lower north shore. Otherwise, why else would Lisa Wilkinson wish to stay under one?

Not content to act like a normal Sydneysider and enjoy the weekend’s respite from La Nina or head off to a Hottest 100 barbecue, Channel 10’s Minister for Health instead spent the weekend penning her latest doomer manifesto.

Australia’s Covid situation, Wilkinson said Sunday night to an audience of 38 viewers and 147 cats, was a “bin fire”.

Why?

Lisa Wilkinson on The Project.

Well, quite simply because Australians are getting on with life in the face of an omicron outbreak that is wildly contagious but for the vast majority of people rapidly heading towards “just the flu” territory.

How much better would it be, said Wilkinson, if we were like New Zealand where under new rules announced to cope with a virus so deadly people often don’t experience any symptoms at all, household close contacts may have to spend 24 days under house arrest.

Bin fire, by the way, is a favourite Lisa-ism.

Back in March, she called Prime Minister Scott Morrison a “bin fire”.

In August, she called then-Premier Gladys Berejiklian’s leadership a “bin fire”.

You would think that sharing a house with serially published author of bonza you-beaut Aussie legends Peter FitzSimons, she might have tripped over a thesaurus from time to time.

But while the pandemic has been tough on all of us, leading even the most sober commentators to occasionally overreact, Wilkinson certainly has form.

Which does lead one to wonder why so many news outlets seem keen to repeat her gloomy sermonettes as anything other than a cry for help. With her show The Project’s ratings in the toilet, certainly most Australians aren’t listening to her.

Withe husband Peter FitzSimons.

Remember her regular diatribes last year against then-Premier Gladys Berejiklian?

“Gladys Berejiklian makes no restrictions … people wanted a hard lockdown!”, she demanded last August, presumably wishing for a Dan Andrews-style ring of steel, curfew, and spirit-breaking policing of playgrounds and takeaway coffee cups.

In one she slammed Berejiklian for instituting a “soft lockdown”.

In another she said Berejiklian should “step aside” if case numbers did not come down.

It’s worth noting that Wilkinson never once called for Labor’s Dan Andrews to resign during Victoria’s many crises, but that’s another story.

Instead, she apologised to Victoria for their lockdown, saying it was a direct result of Sydney’s failure to lockdown quickly.

The fact is, the lockdowns and curfews she advocated increasingly look divorced from reality. Melbourne had six of them, spent longer under restriction than just about any other city in the world, and came out worst in Australia.

Go figure.

More than that they would have landed hardest on people at the opposite end of the income scale from the $1.7 million a year Wilkinson.

Imagine being the new migrant forced to pack the micro-herbs in a Delta-struck warehouse to be shipped out to Wilkinson’s local gourmet shop – an essential service, don’t you know – and then return at the end of your shift to a crowded apartment with no backyard?

Talk about a bin fire.