Peta Credlin: Democracy is dead as premiers play pandemic politics
Premiers are playing pandemic politics by picking and choosing who can and cannot hold protests, or who can and cannot enter their states — often without releasing health advice to back up their decisions. Australia deserves better, writes Peta Credlin.
Opinion
Don't miss out on the headlines from Opinion. Followed categories will be added to My News.
- 14 arrests, 81 fines issued at anti-lockdown protests
- COVID masks with ‘gassy smell’ leave nurses gagging
Would you have thought at the start of the year that a pyjama-clad pregnant woman might be arrested and handcuffed in her own home in front of her own family for the heinous crime of simply posting on Facebook that she’d like to organise a protest?
We all know the answer.
And yes, none of us would have anticipated a pandemic, complete with curfew and virtual house arrest for 5½ million of our fellow citizens either.
But just because this pandemic is unprecedented and largely unanticipated doesn’t mean we should sacrifice our basic freedoms beyond the period of immediate emergency, or that parliament’s oversight of our politicians should be junked.
Yet that’s just what is happening. We’re now a nation divided by borders — the sort we haven’t seen since Federation.
In Victoria, they’re living under rules that we didn’t even have in place when our country was at war.
And elsewhere around the country, unelected officials are exercising powers that are refusing people basic access to medical services or compassionate exemptions to grieve loved ones with a brutal regularity that should shame us all.
All in it together?
No way, especially when you’ve got senior police officers such as Victoria’s Assistant Commissioner Luke Cornelius, who last week justified strongarm tactics against Ballerat mother Zoe Lee Buhler wanting to organise a socially distanced protest in a country town with virtually no corona cases — but who made excuses back on 3 June for 10,000 Black Lives Matter protesters who actually took to the streets and helped bring on Melbourne’s second wave.
MORE FROM PETA CREDLIN
It’s time for COVID dictatorships to end
Why Erin Molan can change troll laws
COVID-19 a chance to tackle tough policies
Indeed, he said then, “we are very keen to support the community in giving voice to their concerns” and that they would “exercise discretion” in issuing fines.
In end, 10,000 activists marched fine-free with only three organisers copping an infringement, yet an inoffensive mother has been charged with incitement over a mere online post and faces a 15-year jail term.
To be clear, I don’t think any protests are justified when Victorians are trying to do the right thing and quell the second wave caused by the incompetence of Labor’s botched hotel quarantine.
Right around the country I know everyone wants to do what they can to enable life to resume as the best sort of normal we can get this side of a vaccine.
We all want to see jobs back, businesses open and our economy out of this now-official recession as soon as we can.
But what sort of a democracy do we have when the Victorian Premier gags debate and rams his emergency powers bill through the parliament at 2am? What sort of crossbench MPs do we have who vote to give him the power to enter homes, detain people and suspend the ordinary law of the land for another six months, without first seeing the plan he says he will release today that’s meant to transition Victorians out of these lockdowns?
The Victorian government won’t even provide any health advice that says these draconian powers are necessary despite multiple demands from doctors who say these lockdowns are damaging people’s health, not helping it. There’s a real sense in Victoria that the Andrews government has no idea of how to get out of this crisis and is merely managing the daily spin.
Then there’s the Queensland Premier, whose pig-headed border closures made emergency treatment for a pregnant mum impossible — as a consequence, she lost one of her unborn twins.
Yet days later, in sashay the AFL executives, their wives and children, so she can host the AFL grand final one week before polling day.
Queensland’s tough quarantine rules? For a Queensland grandmother, returning home after brain surgery in Sydney, a miserable single room. For the AFL’s entourage, an exclusive resort with outdoor space and pool, with a press conference with the Premier to boot, all engineered to kick along Labor’s re-election bid.
To justify what she thinks is an election-winning Fortress Queensland strategy, the Premier trots out her Chief Health Officer to say the border won’t reopen until NSW goes 28 days without a case of community transmission. Show me another place in the world that meets that standard?
Health isn’t driving any of this any more; it’s pure partisan politics of the nastiest kind, with the Queensland Premier hoping COVID hysteria delivers amnesia too so voters forget the budget red ink, corruption claims and years of substandard performance when they go to the polls in a matter of weeks.
Everyone making the rules still has their job, on full pay and, for many, an increase on the way. But for almost everyone else who has to live under them, financial worries are just the tip of the iceberg, along with trying to homeschool children, keep their mental health together and just hope those running the show know what they’re doing.
For 119 years our federation has worked. Come on Australia, we deserve better than this.
ABBOTT’S UNPAID POSITION VITAL
Tony Abbott’s appointment as an adviser to the UK Government’s new Board of Trade is now official. But not without a week of some of the worst smears we’ve seen thrown at someone who’s always inspired the hate of the left.
It’s not a surprise that those who want Brexit to fail have been his loudest critics. Reinvigorating trade is about getting Brexit done as PM Boris Johnson promised.
And Mr Abbott’s appointment is about helping a country renew old trade arrangements, and build new ones, unburdened by the iron constraints of the EU.
I might also add here, this is an UNPAID position. Just like his volunteer firefighting and surf lifesaving, his fundraising work and support for “Soldier On”, and more.
This isn’t a former PM using his old title to make money. Unlike some. This is a man who has always genuinely believed in public service.
It’s not a position that’s in conflict with Australia, indeed it’s in our interests that a post-Brexit Britain is strong and succeeds, and that we get a good trade deal with them as soon as possible.
THUMBS UP: Federal Water Minister Keith Pitt’s restructure of the Murray Darling Basin Plan to protect farmers and regional communities with an end to forced environmental water buybacks. He’s a man to watch — the ex-engineer gets things done.
THUMBS DOWN: Julia Gillard’s so-called misogyny speech, let’s never forget, was used to defend her disgraced speaker, Peter Slipper, over abusive comments he made about female genitalia and more. Her speech should have been directed at him, not her political rival — #tellthetruth.