Australia’s COVID-19 political response is now envy of the world
During times like these it’s easy to focus on the hardships rather than the successes. And while there’s still a way to go, what we’ve achieved in fighting coronavirus is mighty, writes Peta Credlin.
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Mother’s Day should always be a time to stop and to give thanks for all our blessings. The greatest of them, of course, is the life that our mothers gifted us.
We’ve actually got more than usual to be grateful for this Mother’s Day, despite the fact that many of us can’t actually visit our mums because of the social distancing needed to keep them safe.
Not only have we got through the corona crisis, thus far, with fewer than 100 deaths, but we can now see the light at the end of the tunnel. Not for us, here in Australia, the tens of thousands of deaths endured in Britain and America – thanks to early bans on flights from China and the eventual fair dinkum hotel-based quarantining of all incoming passengers rather than the earlier sham home-based isolation.
Around the world, almost 300,000 families have lost someone they love due to this virus so while it might be easy to be ‘glass half empty’ this weekend given the many restrictions we’re still be stuck with, I prefer to be ‘glass half full.’
There’s no escaping the reality that measures necessary to protect us from this pandemic have led to a million more unemployed Australians since mid-March, and have put nearly five million people onto the JobKeeper payment. But we don’t have bodies piling up in hospital corridors or people refused treatment because there isn’t an intensive care bed for them and, for that, we need to be grateful.
It’s a bit rich for critics to complain about how successful Australia has been and to lament that it’s cost billions. What do they want – a death tally like Britain’s 30,000, or the 70,000 in the US to justify the expenditure?
The whole world would want to be where we are now; and given our lockdown has been less than two months, provided we keep up the handwashing and the distancing, and we stay the course when it comes to our borders, life can now start to return to normal.
(Although I have to say here if the government thinks we’re going to be happy for the universities to start bringing in foreign students on special charter flights because they’ve become so reliant on the overseas student dollar, even though our borders are closed to everyone else, they’ve got another thing coming).
As Australians, regardless of our personal politics, we can be proud and grateful for the job our leaders have done; huge pressure, so many unknowns and the unenviable choice of health over the economy when both bring their own devastations. Panic buying aside, we can also be proud of the way just about all of us have kept calm and carried on through this fraught period in history – from the health workers, to the supermarket workers, and rest of us who stayed home.
On the back of Friday’s ‘Road map to Recovery’, announced by the Prime Minister, there’s now a path back to a fully functioning economy and, Treasury estimates, a restoration of 850,000 of the jobs that the coronavirus has taken away. What route each state takes, will be decided premier by premier. But the destination is the same. It’s the sort of Australia we had, eight weeks or so ago, before this virus spread like wildfire. The PM said back then, that it could be six months to get through this crisis – now it’s looking likely that it will be a lot less – but then Scott Morrison is a canny politician and he was always likely to under-promise and over-deliver.
Given some premiers’ over-dependence on “expert advice”, and the natural caution of doctors, I was worried that all we’d get from the National Cabinet on Friday was a statement of principles and more motherhood, like ‘we’re all in this together.’ But provided the premiers now act, Morrison’s robust insistence on a step-by-step process should get us back to normal, or as normal as it can be, in the absence of an effective vaccine or the virus disappearing.
Even if a vaccine is developed (and all credit to the Aussie scientists leading the way here) we’re very unlikely to see it any time soon, so we’d be smart to get used to living with this virus for a while yet.
Some scientists say that we have to accept that a vaccine for COVID-19 may never be found. After all, we don’t have one for the common-cold or SARS, which are also corona-type viruses. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be more effective treatments, over time, to deal with any infections, nor should it mean a locked up a life. It might just mean a more careful one.
It’s all too easy sometimes when you comment on the news of the day to focus on our hardships rather than our successes; and on what’s gone wrong, rather than what we got right. To get to where we are now, even though there’s still a long way back economically, is a mighty achievement from our politicians – all of them – and from the Australian people, who by and large have cheerfully accepted the restrictions needed to get us through.
Many weeks ago, I said that this virus would be a real test of our national character. I don’t know about you, but I reckon we’ve passed it.