COVID-19 brings double standards out in the open

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and Qantas CEO Alan Joyce. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Tertius Pickard/Flavio Brancaleone

US and global sharemarkets, including ours in Australia, are losing their risk appetite in the wake of the repercussions of COVID-19.

But in Australia there is an even deeper change.

We are reviving our old values, including an intense dislike of double standards and hypocrisy. We may emerge from COVID-19 with a new form of mateship.

The double standard hatred covers both the government and corporate worlds and our politicians and chief executives will need to adapt to this, perhaps surprising, fallout from COVID-19.

Let’s start with Queensland. As next month’s state election approached most people thought that Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk would win easily.

And she was cementing her strong position with active attraction of major sporting events like the AFL and the wooing of film and entertainment production to the state of Queensland. All this created jobs and promoted the best the attributes of Queensland.

Yet the current opinion polls show that Palaszczuk has fallen behind her Coalition opponent. The best explanation I have heard for her fall is that the people that came to Queensland were shown to be “living it up“ and enjoying the luxuries of pools and other facilities.

At the same time ordinary people couldn’t bring their close relatives to funerals and suffered other restrictions that seemed at odds with what was happening on the Gold Coast and other areas. It created what seemed a double standard that would not have been recognised in past years.

In the corporate world Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce and his top echelon have been slashing the costs of the airline. But at the same time Joyce and his fellow executives also slashed their remuneration. There was no double standard and Joyce is a model CEO for tough times. In contrast my colleague Jared Lynch last week revealed a series of chief executives who are boosting their take-home pay with lavish bonuses while their companies are accepting a JobKeeper. There will be a long-term penalty for boards who take such actions.

Qantas CEO Alan Joyce. Picture: Flavio Brancaleone

In Victoria, like me, the overall population agrees with the way Premier Daniel Andrews is slashing the infection rate caused by the second wave of the pandemic because they can see in the US and Europe what happens if communities with high infection rates don’t take strong action via lockdowns.

But the Andrews government’s overall support is declining. The government is under pressure from events outside the basic thrust of the second lockdown. In particular there is the total amnesia of a series of public servants over who had even partial responsibility for the hotel quarantine fiasco.

And then there is a double standard adopted by not prosecuting Afghan families who broke the curfew but prosecuting people in the streets who broke the rules. Just as the Queensland government’s attraction of celebrities was based on economic benefit, so the Victorian action was understandable and justifiable because it was based on the undoubted benefits of better contact tracing. But to the community it was a double standard.

Rio blasted

A few years ago Rio Tinto would have escaped punishment for blasting 46,000 year old cave paintings. The deeply entrenched Londoners in Rio Tinto would never have considered destroying the cultural heritage sites around their St James Square head office.

But Australia was so remote and so different to the London environment that destroying our cultural heritage sites didn’t seem important. It was a double standard. The fact that Australia generates around 90 per cent of the Rio Tinto earnings escaped the Londoner’s notice.

In WA, Premier Mark McGowan, who is the son of a wool classer and lives 46km south of Perth, has scored approval ratings close to 90 per cent; levels rarely achieved in democracies.

But it’s not surprising because WA is leading the Australian economy at this point in the COVID-19 cycle. The major miners have set up hubs around their mines which they are allowed to administer but there are none of the celebrity antics of Queensland.

Instead of fly in fly out, families of miners have been flown in to hotels in Perth which has further boosted the economy. And WA enterprises that met the first JobKeeper criteria have been showered with cash. With the eastern border shut all the money stays in WA.

Readers will remember I have been flagging the fact that homeware and home improvement retailers have been booming. That’s now coming out in corporate reports like this week’s Harvey Norman announcement.

But in but in WA the level of strength is higher than any other part of the nation. Unlike the rest of Australia in the years leading up to COVID-19, WA was in recession. It was just pulling out when the cash avalanche hit the state.

Unlike so many others, the WA premier knows how to handle his good fortune. Politicians and chief executives will need to appreciate that the nation that comes out of COVID-19 will be different.

Footnote: I was overwhelmed yesterday by the almost 1000 comments that were sparked by my revelation of the Orwellian actions of the Victorian government. Outside my reader base these actions are not yet understood by the Victorian public but the message is spreading around the community and the nation.