QandA: How has 2020 changed you?

In 2020 Australians faced one crisis after another from bushfires to the global coronavirus pandemic and an election which kept the world on its toes.

QandA's final episode for 2020

“How has 2020 changed you?”

This was the question put before QandA’s final panel of 2020 in a year that bore witness to bushfires, a global pandemic, the US election and growing trade tensions between China and Australia.

To answer, host Hamish Macdonald brought in rock legend Jimmy Barnes, Labor MP for Eden-Monaro Kristy McBain, former NSW Liberal MP Michael Yabsley, Macquarie University senior lecturer Lavina Lee and artist, writer and sex worker Rita Therese.

Each was asked to share a significant picture that came to mind when they thought of 2020.

For Mr Yablsey it was an image of Donald Trump refusing to concede the election at 2am in the morning, while for Dr Lee it was the long queues outside Centrelink offices when jobs were slashed in the pandemic.

The rest of panel pictured bushfire-related images. Barnes recalled an image of animals killed in the black summer bushfires, Ms McBain recalled about 200 people awaiting bushfire updates in the Bermagui Country Club on the NSW south coast on New Year’s Day while Therese pictured a viral meme of a dog drinking coffee in a house on fire.

Audience member Graeme Freedman.

On the brink of another bushfire season, audience member Graeme Freedman, who lost his home during the black summer bushfires, asked when the government will genuinely get together to co-ordinate some “truly practical help”?

Ms McBain responded that part of the issue is that most simply don’t understand the process of a recovery.

“I think something that Australians and governments don’t understand is that recovery is not a quick fix,” she said.

“We need a complete rewrite of bushfire planning. We need to make it simple and easy for people to help themselves get out of this situation.”

But, she acknowledged, when the pandemic arrived, the bushfire crisis lost its place in the public eye. “The conversation so quickly moved on to COVID that that feeling of abandonment (for bushfire victims) has never left.”

Not long after national interest was again hijacked by the US election, she said.

Part of the problem, Barnes said, “is that we have to stop thinking about how do we put a bandaid on it and start dealing with problems from the ground up”.

Eden-Monaro MP Kristy McBain at her home in Tura Beach, NSW. Picture: Sean Davey

“We have had so many royal commissions. They are ignored,” he says.

For Barnes, Scott Morrison’s actions interacting with bushfire-ravaged communities had an adverse effect.

“The Prime Minister’s actions made me embarrassed to be Australian,” he said.

The next question for the panel came from Donna Ward from Fitzroy North, Victoria.

When the lockdown began, Ms Ward found herself in isolation alone. Admitting her own struggles in solitude, she asked, “I wonder how each of you did with the dark times during Covid?”

Jimmy Barnes at his NSW Southern Highlands home during COVID-19. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

Former NSW Liberal MP Michael Yabsley.

For some of the panel, there was a positive lining. Barnes’s singing career improved and he said he was touched by listeners reaching out to him.

Mr Yabsley, on the other hand, found comfort in his own solitude.

Mr Yabsley, who recently came out during the pandemic, faced a different reckoning.

“Obviously this has been a pretty major moment in my life. It’s been a case of coming to terms with the truth and some might say that the age of 63 that is – you know, a pretty old stage of your life to be doing that,” he said.

“One thing he has learned,” he said, “is that, happy families are not always conventional and conventional families are not always happy.

“I thought a lot about my own circumstances and ultimately this was – this was a moment of truth. It’s a moment of truth that has been very difficult for some people.”

Although he came out during the pandemic, it was purely coincidental. “Coming out had been in the works for months,” he said.

Therese said that, at first, “it was like what do I need to think about? Where do I want to go? Who do I want to be? What do I care about?”

She noted that for anyone with a history of trauma or mental illness, it would be even tougher.

But after some time alone with thoughts, she said, “it was weirdly refreshing”.

“Being a sex worker during the lockdown was so challenging,” she said.

Questioned about the attitudes of men who pay for sex-work services but refuse to date a sex worker, Therese said she has met so many different people through her line of work that it’s a question she doesn’t think about.

“I don’t have a particularly moralistic standpoint towards sex,” she said.

‘Men will want to have their Madonna and their whore. That’s how men are”: Rita Therese. Picture: Dirt Erotic

While noting that it’s different from a service provider like a hairdresser, she says that at the end of the day, “you are exchanging money for a service”.

“I have seen a difference in people’s attitudes with online dating. When I first came out as a worker, when I was 18 on Instagram, there were, like, maybe a small handful of people in the community,” she said.

“Now it is really thriving,” she said. ”I think people are becoming more accepting and more understanding and I think that’s cool.”

“Men will want to have their Madonna and their whore. That’s how men are. And I don’t try and fight that.”

One of the final questions of the evening was of the perception of Australia being a US lapdog.

Amid claims that Australia is doing the US’s bidding, Dr Lee defended Australia’s action over the past year, saying that, ultimately “Australia came out ahead of other countries”.

“Calling out China’s activities in the South China Sea, as being against international law under the convention, all of those things are not things that America asked us to do or directed us to do,” said Dr Lee.

“If you looked at, say, for example, the US and China and the tensions between the US and China, they really pre-existed COVID-19, but what COVID-19 did was it brought to it the surface and actually made it even more tense than it ever was before.

“So, you had, for example, China trying to deflect responsibility for the outbreak of COVID-19 in the first place, and then moving to this kind of aggressive wolf warrior-type diplomacy.”

On protecting businesses affected by trade tensions, Ms McBain says, it’s time to have a stern talk with China.

“If we’re serious about trying to protect small business, serious about trying to protect our agricultural interests, then get on a plane, go to China and sit down and have a frank conversation,” she said.

“Isn’t that what diplomacy is all about?”

QandA's final episode for 2020

Dr Lee said, “Look, sure, it’s probably a convenient way to characterise us as a lapdog of

the United States. But I would still say, when you look at the 14 grievances that the Chinese embassy released, those grievances are all sovereign decisions that a government can and should be able to make without any interference from another country and I would see those 14 grievances as basically demands on Australia to outsource our foreign policy to China.”