Coronavirus will be our nation’s greatest test of character
So much of what happens from here on in, and how we cope as a nation, requires the coming together. Because in the end, the only people Australians can rely on, are ourselves, writes Peta Credlin.
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As our cities turned into ghost towns this week, with much social mixing and all foreign travel banned, and regular news updates on the economic contagion that’s hit financial markets, businesses and jobs, it’s hard to see where all of this will end.
At this time of worry and confusion, there are still a couple of things Australians should be grateful for. Our health planners had been thinking about how to deal with a potential pandemic for more than two decades given China’s history with SARS and avian flu, our geographic proximity, and increasing people to people links via tourists and visa holders.
Back on the 21st of January, I’m told by my colleagues at Sky, I was the first person to ask the Prime Minister in an interview about a concerning new disease outbreak in Wuhan, when the rest of the press gallery was still trying to score a hit against him over bushfires and climate change. But this is because unlike most of them, I had read years of official briefing material about pandemic risk when working in government and along with the increasing terror risk faced by nations like ours, this is what kept me awake at night.
So much of what happens from here on in, and how we cope as a nation, requires the coming together of government, business and society. It’s warlike; the PM’s right; and that’s perhaps the real challenge for so many of us given we have only known good times – not even an economic downturn – let alone the curtailing of our personal liberties.
For us, and for our nation, this will be a test of character.
We won’t get everything right, there will be mistakes and people will inevitably feel government should have done something differently, but as disease experts remind us continually, delay is death, quite literally, and that if you wait for the perfect plan rather than acting fast and accepting there will be mistakes, more will die.
Right now, in the eye of the storm, we need to will our leaders, our medical experts, our frontline health workers and everyone involved in this fight, to succeed. We need to do what they tell us. And we need to call out bad behaviour – like we’ve had in our supermarkets, or the crowd at Bondi Beach – because in the end, it’s not up to government to police society, we are society.
When we come through this, as we will, there will some real lessons for Australia beyond the standard imperatives to keep the economy strong and to have strong border control. Many of the countries of Europe that decided to impose entry restrictions found to their dismay that they had few actual borders left to shut; thank God, that’s not us.
But it’s one thing to want a stronger economy and another thing to actually get it. Once this crisis has passed, we need to rethink everything that has had the practical effect of holding our economy back.
How can we be economically strong, for instance, if we can’t build the new dams needed to allow agriculture to expand, and can’t increase production of the minerals and other resources which are the main source of our national wealth? Or if we can’t generate secure energy at a price that keeps manufacturing in this country? Or seem intent to allow foreign investment, by itself not a bad thing, to morph into foreign ownership and control of our farms, mines, companies and processing plants?
The most important lesson is that we relearn what it means to be a self-reliant nation. Despite the unedifying hoarding, at least we still make toilet paper in this country. But what about something more sophisticated, like ventilator machines; how do we get them when the rest of the world wants them too, and we don’t make them here? Forget the clever country lie, or the ‘don’t worry, there’s be green jobs’ rubbish – by chasing the cheap products on the shelf and making the cost of doing business here uneconomic, we’ve basically consigned ourselves to manufacturing vulnerability.
In the end, the only people Australians can rely on, are ourselves. When the world is chasing testing kits and face masks, or lifesaving drugs, let alone ventilators to save their sick; and when we’ve run out or don’t make it here anymore, we need to wake up.
Three decades of exporting our resources has left us with wealth – but high energy prices, an inflexible industrial relations system, cheap Chinese imports, and a lack of trade qualifications among young people, have ripped away the manufacturing industries that a serious country needs.
In future, protecting ourselves from coronavirus Mark II, or a GFC re-run, has got to be at the forefront of government policy and it’s a whole lot more than just pandemic preparations because it goes to the heart of what sort of country we want to be.
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Whether you voted for him or not, on a human level, spare a thought for Scott Morrison. Having seen the demands on a prime minister at close quarters, this will be having a huge personal toll on him, and those around him, as he deals with the perfect storm of health crisis and near economic collapse. All the usual levers aren’t easy to pull; it’s hard to keep money moving through the economy when the consumers who usually spend it are told to stay home. It’s hard to impress on younger people that while they might get through it, if they don’t get out of the bars and off the beach, they will kill thousands of older Australians who aren’t as robust.
I know that people are worried, it’s palpable; but I have confidence in government and the broader system that supports it, and for the system to respond. What I am more concerned about to be honest, is us. For a long time, we have let those who hate who we are, strip away at what’s made us strong – our values, family, faith and patriotism. I want to hope that somewhere deep in all of us, these things remain.