Tim Blair: World recognising the absurdity of Australia’s continual Covid lockdowns

Australia once laughed at other nations and made light of their criticisms, but now the world laughs at us and our continuing lust for lockdowns, writes Tim Blair.

According to leftist types, Australia in the ­recent past was an international pariah due to our attitudes on climate change and towards illegal immigration.

Exactly why we were said to be climate pariahs was always a mystery. Being generators of just 1.2 per cent or so of all human-created carbon dioxide, Australia has never been much of a climate destroyer.

And our successful rebuilding of border security subsequent to federal Labor’s incompetence has since been admired and emulated by foreign nations dealing with their own ocean arrivals.

In fact, we were never pariahs on either charge of climate recklessness or immigration inhumanity.

I travelled all over the place – remember travel? – during our so-called pariah era and despite being openly and unrepentantly Australian was never once taken to task for my ­nation’s supposed wrongs.

(Pro tip: If you’re ever cornered overseas and asked to explain genuine Australian offences, such as the Wiggles, Helen Caldicott or Kevin Rudd, just tell your accuser they’re all originally from New Zealand. This isn’t true, but it will at least buy you some time to get out of there.)

But now we’re seen as something far worse than fake pariahs.

Now, thanks to Australia’s unending Covid panic, Covid lockdowns and overall Covid obsession, we’re viewed as a global laughing-stock.

US columnist Charles CW Cooke last week expressed amused astonishment at a claim from South Australian Premier Steven Marshall that “every South Australian should feel pretty proud that we are the national pilot for the home-based quarantine app”.

South Australian Premier Steven Marshall has inexplicably boasted of his state’s home quarantine app. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Naomi Jellicoe

That app gives pilot volunteers, when randomly contacted by authorities, 15 minutes to take pictures of their faces in the locations they’re supposed to be.

“Pride?” Cooke wondered. “There is not a single human being in the world likely to express that feeling.

“Hell, there are people working in North Korea’s Omniscient Surveillance Department who, upon reading this line, would raise their eyebrows and say, ‘well, come on, old chap, that’s a little much, don’t you think?’ What on earth is going on Down Under?”

The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf went further: “If a country indefinitely forbids its own citizens from leaving its borders, strands tens of thousands of its citizens abroad, puts strict rules on intrastate travel, prohibits citizens from leaving home without an excuse from an official government list, mandates masks even when people are outdoors and socially distanced, deploys the military to enforce those rules, bans protest, and arrests and fines dissenters, is that country still a liberal democracy?”

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has warned of a Covid danger to very small children. Picture: Richard Walker

Forget liberal democracy. At present, Australia isn’t even behaving as a federation.

Anyone wishing to visit Western Australia must first pass a strict yes/no test: “Are you playing in the 2021 AFL grand final?”

A similar NRL finals rule may soon apply in Queensland, where Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk is lately wailing about the coronavirus safety of children aged 0 to 12 – an age category that has suffered not a single Covid death in Australia.

“You open this state,” Palaszczuk told parliament last week, “and you let the virus in here and every child under 12 is vulnerable.”

But, as The Australian’s Gerard Henderson observed, there is currently no vaccine available for children so young: “This would mean that Australia’s third-largest state, measured by population, could have its international and national borders closed for the foreseeable future.”

And Victoria is basically at war with itself following Premier Dan ­Andrews’s belated recognition, after six lockdowns, that maybe there could be another path forward.

His abandonment of Victoria’s previous Covid zero aims did not go down well with Dan’s lockdown fans.

Victorian Premier Dan Andrews may finally be coming around to the idea that lockdowns aren’t the only answer. Picture : NCA NewsWire / Ian Currie

“Deciding to ‘live with Covid’ is a recipe for death and ill health on a massive scale,” Socialist Alternative’s Jerome Small complained. Speaking of death and ill health on a massive scale, Small is in for a shock if he ever checks socialism’s track record.

An optimistic editorial in Melbourne’s The Age – “Premier, your state needs hope” – led to an online campaign to cancel Age subscriptions.

Meanwhile, sane Victorians considered their various health and ­financial risks then decided to hell with all this and hit the beach.

“Hundreds of people gathered at Elwood Beach on Thursday afternoon, with many beachgoers maskless and drinking alcohol in breach of lockdown restrictions,” the Herald Sun reported.

The same piece noted only “a minor police presence”. Andrews, possibly aware he’s lost this fight, may have called off his lockdown enforcers.

Still, this won’t do much to hasten border re-openings. Or to re-establish any concept of a unified Australia.

Australia is not a united country, with the country now a laughing stock in the eyes of the rest of the world.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison last week confirmed he would allow states to decide for themselves when they reintroduced overseas travel.

Next up: separate passports, currencies and possibly languages.

Perhaps, if this continues for another few years, we’ll eventually fracture into a land of Balkan-style nation states.

The first war between those rival entities might be between Western Australia, South Australia and Queensland over who gets to own the Northern Territory.

At least casualties will be minimal.

It’s not easy to kill someone if troops are allowed to stray only 5km from their barracks.