Daily Telegraph Editorial: Covid mindset must move on
It’s the question that won’t go away and the question that still no political leader can answer: Are we living with Covid or not?
Opinion
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It’s the question that won’t go away and the question that still no political leader can answer: Are we living with Covid or not?
Even as case numbers and hospitalisations decline, even amid the beating of the state government’s own best-case scenario projections, it seems our leaders simply cannot shake the Covid-zero mindset.
Why, for example, are we still scanning QR codes that nobody is checking, let alone using for contact tracing?
Why are we extending restrictions long after numbers have peaked and are on the way down?
And why are we subjecting non-symptomatic kids to invasive rapid antigen tests twice a week?
We are constantly told by our bureaucratic betters not to mention the chattering classes of lockdown luvvies, that we must always listen to and follow the science.
And so, pray tell, what is the science behind any of these measures? Especially when we are no longer attempting to eliminate the virus and – by every available metric – are already suppressing it.
Premier Dominic Perrottet was, to his great credit, an early and often solitary voice of rationality and realism among political leaders when it came to living with Covid – something, it is worth remembering, that all state and territory leaders agreed to do.
However, it appears that even he has now been captured by the Covid catastrophists and browbeaten by bureaucrats.
It would be a shame if the fight for freedom – and indeed just plain old common sense – has left him.
One only need look to the other side of the country to see the ridiculousness of pursuing a Covid-zero policy in the age of Omicron. And one only need hear some of the comments emanating from the McGowan government to realise that Western Australia is even further from reality than it is from the east coast.
Such increasingly ludicrous isolationism only gives weight to the fear that the West’s hospitals must be made of straw.
The NSW health system, by contrast, has shown itself to be incredibly robust and well-resourced, not least because of pressure applied by this newspaper over the years.
Instead of being afraid of Covid, we should be proud of our ability to deal with it.
TIME IS UP FOR SYDNEY’S GUNMEN
There was a time when many law-abiding Sydney citizens professed themselves to be relatively untroubled by escalating gun crime.
As they saw it, gun crime was largely confined to criminal gangs, and therefore any shootings were not of overwhelming concern to others.
But that time has clearly passed. Gun crime in Sydney has dramatically worsened to the point that innocent parties are now at risk.
According to the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, prohibited and regulated firearms offences increased by 4.7 per cent on average each year over the past five years.
In the gun crime hotspot of Cumberland City Council, however, such grievous offences have increased by an average 11.5 per cent a year.
This situation requires a three-pronged response.
First, the police presence in Cumberland Council suburbs such as Auburn, Granville and Guildford must be boosted.
The zero-tolerance model adopted in New York during the 1990s should be the template. Targeted police increases in troubled New York areas worked on two levels: criminals were caught and would-be criminals thought twice before breaking the law.
Adding police may sound like a simple solution, but it worked in New York and will work here.
Second, there would be little point in increasing the numbers of police if that tougher approach was not supported by tougher sentencing.
Mandatory sentencing should be introduced for those convicted of being in possession of illegal firearms.
And the third element of this strategy is related to the second. If the judiciary persists in running a revolving-door system of bailing and releasing firearm criminals, then the judiciary should be made accountable when freed criminals reoffend.
At present, the only people who pay any penalty for the judiciary’s errors are members of the public whose suburbs and streets are becoming unliveable.
Daylight shootings and torched getaway cars should not be frequent events in any areas of Sydney.
Yet the judiciary, whether due to social justice theories or lack of rigour, keep returning criminals to the streets so that they can reoffend.
Put those three steps in place and gun crime must decline.
COWARDLY COUNCILS CANCELLING AUS DAY
Every year, certain woke councils make a big noise about rejecting Australia Day.
And every year, those very same councils are invariably surprised by the vehemence of opposition to their anti-Australia Day stances.
It is almost as though those councils do not recognise or appreciate the beliefs and feelings of their own electorates.
But this year, as in 2021, councils not inclined to mark our national day have a cover. They can claim that an absence of Australia Day festivities is due not to their rejection of Australia Day, but that it is due to Covid safety concerns.
For example, this is how a Blacktown City spokeswoman explained their Australia Day cancellation: “While council acknowledges the ‘change the date’ movement, our decisions to cancel or take events online were purely in the interests of public health and safety.”
Cumberland councillor Steve Christou isn’t buying it.
“Covid has now become an excuse for the ‘woke left’ and doomsayers to say, if it doesn’t fit their ideology, let’s just cancel it because of Covid,” he said.
“I firmly believe this is the case now. We’re two years into Covid, with a third booster available. What push can there be to keep cancelling their events, especially a major public holiday like Australia Day?”
Christou is right. Using Covid as an excuse is a cowardly way out. As Canterbury-Bankstown mayor Khal Asfour said, councils using Covid to scrap events “should have the guts to come out and state their intentions without blaming the virus”.
Both Christou and Asfour, of course, are tremendous examples of Australia’s successful and harmonious multiculturalism – which raises an interesting point about councillors who reject Australia Day.
To have a multicultural society you obviously need multiple cultures. From that perspective, the arrival in Australia of the First Fleet in 1788 was the initial step towards multiculturalism.
And every year, Australia Day citizenship ceremonies continue that grand process.
These newly-minted Australians will always treasure the day they became as one with us, for the very good reason that this nation is an ongoing triumph of human spirit.
Australia Day. Long may it celebrate the single greatest country on earth.
BIPARTISAN RESPONSE NEEDED ON PM’S WECHAT
China-owned social media platform WeChat is the largest single mobile phone app on earth.
In fact, it has held that position for four years. So it makes sense for Australian politicians to have a WeChat presence, especially because WeChat has a large audience among Australia’s Chinese community.
However, WeChat also effectively functions as an arm of China’s communist dictatorship. It censors any information or opinions that run counter to the interests of China’s regime.
It additionally supplies user data directly to the Chinese government. If you are on WeChat, be assured of this: Beijing is watching you.
But they will no longer be watching Scott Morrison, at least via his WeChat account, which has locked out the Australian Prime Minister and rebranded his account with pro-regime propaganda.
Reasonably enough, Liberal Senator James Paterson now invites all Australian politicians to turn their backs on WeChat.
“I am calling on all Australian politicians to voluntarily boycott WeChat,” Paterson told The Daily Telegraph.
“We cannot allow a foreign authoritarian government to interfere in our democracy and set the terms of public debate in Australia.”
Paterson makes a strong point, because the banishing of Morrison means WeChat is no longer a level playing field.
As the senator notes, Labor remains able to share posts attacking the Coalition but the government cannot respond.
For example, WeChat stopped allowing updates to Morrison’s account in July last year.
Labor leader Anthony Albanese, on the other hand, is still sharing updates with followers.
Recent posts attack what Albanese described as “Morrison’s lies” on foreign policy.
Albanese has also used WeChat to promote his demand for free rapid antigen tests.
“Once again we see evidence the Chinese government is seeking to enforce censorship well beyond its borders and interfere in our democracy,” Paterson said.
Again, this is a strong point. China’s ambitions are plainly expansionist, as Taiwan, Hong Kong and others will attest.
Australian politicians of all parties can now take a stand for freedom and democracy by declining to participate in WeChat’s sinister games.
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