Coronavirus is forging a different nation

The Australia that comes out of the COVID-19 disaster will not return to “business as usual”. The nation will be very different. Many of the likely changes will be for the better but some will not.

The most obvious change is that the workplace and education sector will never return to the old ways. In addition, a vast number of service enterprises will learn how to organise work remotely and arrange their systems so that those that are working remotely actually work and don’t become simply child minders.

Too many of our universities have used their recent riches to construct buildings but in the era that is ahead there will now be much more electronic learning.

And when at some point schools are told that they must stop students coming to the physical campus, the better schools will not be closing but merely transferring their education to a different medium.

And, because this will last for months, at the end of the crisis many teachers will have become good at electronic education and will incorporate some of the techniques into future education methods.

Watching the states and Commonwealth sit around the electronic table regularly and make decisions in the national interest instead of playing politics just might catch on.

Maybe, just maybe, the Canberra based government politicians will come to understand that racing off and announcing projects and plans that involve states without talking to those states means that nothing gets done.

And from this crisis they will learn that they don’t have to wait around airports to arrange meetings because meetings can be electronic.

And that discovery among the politicians and public servants will spread to the private sector.

Airlines face a terrible beating in the crisis but the world that emerges will have far less business travel because we will be forced to learn how to expand our electronic communication.

It’s just possible that COVID-19 will cause some state politicians to start making decisions in the interests of their total community and not just inner-city voters. This week in a stunning move the Victorian government has decided to act on behalf of the state and reversed its ban on onshore gas exploration and development that does not require fracking.

My hope is that this is an illustration of how COVID-19 crisis is making politicians act on behalf of all voters not just sectional interests in marginal seats.

Victoria has abundant onshore gas that does not require fracking but banned its development even though it meant that that its industries and citizens had to pay much more for their gas.

Much of the Victorian gas is close to Exxon’s treatment plant in Gippsland and is dissolved deep underground in water. That water would have made East Gippsland droughtproof. The government gas bans meant that East Gippsland farmers had to suffer a totally unnecessary shortage of water when the rain did not fall.

And as they were always set to be given part of the gas proceeds they would have been much richer and therefore it would have been easier for the area to recover from the bushfires.

A completely flabbergasted Exxon who planned to spend $400miion to test and develop the non-fracked gas were told put their money back in their pocket. Development might annoy the inner city greens.

Victoria also has reserves of gas on the South Australian border near the Portland aluminium plant.

Of course, gas is now selling at low prices and the Queensland producers are struggling. Development will not be as fast as it would have been when Exxon was ready to go.

Taking our own medicine

And the COVID-19 crisis has also taught us that as an island nation, it is pointless investing vast amounts in defence if you don’t have production capacity for essential medicines and equipment.

And so it was wonderful seeing soldiers being mobilised to help expand production of the lone Australian producer of surgical gowns and other equipment. We are so lucky he stayed in business. In some cases, we discover that where have production capacity for medicines we cannot make the bottles.

The United States made similar mistakes in the now ended era of unrestrained globalism. Globalism is not going to end but nations are going also consider the long term interests of their people to a much greater extent. And new manufacturing techniques take away the tyranny of scale. This may be the biggest change of all.

Finally like most Australians, I have been disturbed at the rush for toilet paper and other supermarket items which sometimes led to violence. And it followed a time when we came together to cope with the bushfire threat. I am not sure of the answer.

Suddenly fear was back, and it triggered as rush to supermarkets reaction that multiplied. But in the Second World War and for four years after the war had ended we had food and clothing coupons. And, particularly after the war, there was a black market. Maybe nothing has changed. We need to look hard at what happened in 2020.