Coronavirus Australia: Gladys Berejiklian and the faux feminists

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian, left, and Victoria Premier Dan Andrews. Pictures: Getty Images

Judging by the bellowing of some commentators and politicians, you would think Greater Sydney and quite possibly the rest of New South Wales are the flooded compartments of a warship that has sustained severe damage. The only chance of saving the vessel is to close the breach, even though the trapped sailors will almost certainly die. “Dither and you will drag us all under,” is the critics’ catchcry.

So NOW it’s a national emergency?
The refusal of NSW to take this seriously - properly seriously - and adopt the lessons learned from other outbreaks and other shutdowns - is bordering on unforgivable. @NSWHealth@GladysB

— Virginia Trioli (@LaTrioli) July 23, 2021

“Sydney is on fire with this virus, and we need a ring of steel put around Sydney,” declared Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews last week. Nothing like a measured leader who refuses to use inflammatory language, is there? He was at it again on Tuesday, lamenting for the cameras that NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian had not accepted his sage advice.

“All we’re saying to the NSW government is it’s a risk to the entire country – they need to put in place measures that work like other states have done,” he said. And then – pause for effect – “I’m not here to do anything other than making positive announcements for our state and hopefully demonstrating to every single Victorian that we will make the tough calls, whether they offend others in other states or not, to keep our state safe”.

Translation: “How lucky are Victorians, unlike the people of NSW, to have the bloke in front of you as Premier.” After all, Victorians go to the polls next year, and it is never too early to begin campaigning. Keep encouraging the personality cult of strongman and saviour, and the electorate may even forget nearly 90 per cent of Australia’s Covid deaths occurred under your watch.

Its clear Daniel Andrews has not just managed #covid19 better than any other state leader, but any other leader in the world. If Scott Morrison wont praise the Victoria for its ‘gold standard’ management of #COVID19Vic it’s simply partisan & churlish. Retweet if you agree #auspolhttps://t.co/MnxW6sQZHg

— Richard Denniss (@RDNS_TAI) July 27, 2021

This boasting and sniping took place when Andrews informed the media that the NSW local government areas of Wagga Wagga, Hay, Lockhart, and Murrumbidgee would no longer be included in the cross-border bubble, thus shutting out thousands of interstate residents. He had not even given Berejiklian a heads-up, claiming he was “too busy” to make a phone call. Too busy making positive announcements, you see.

There is in every workplace a conniver who seeks to disguise his own incompetence by highlighting and exaggerating the faults of his colleagues. As The Daily Telegraph reported today, Apple and Google data has refuted Andrews’ self-serving claim that only a Melbourne-style “ring of steel” could stop the virus from spreading in the NSW capital. On average Sydney residents are spending more time in their house than Melburnians did during the 2020 wave. And as this newspaper reported today, the current rate of Covid infections in Sydney is little more than half of what Melbourne experienced last year, notwithstanding the Delta variant is more infectious.

Self gain and a pandemic

That Andrews exploited Berejiklian’s situation for self-gain while she attempts to manage a pandemic should not surprise anyone. Nevertheless, that does not make his opportunism any less calculating or despicable.

But this mouth of the south is the exemplar of reticence compared to that pest in the west. As is his wont, Western Australian Premier Mark McGowan accused the NSW government of “terrible mistakes” on Monday, saying it was not taking the situation seriously. “Their moment of truth is now,” he said. “They need to actually crush and kill the virus and get themselves out of this situation.” To quote a line from the comedy crime film Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels “Oh, you must be the brains then”.

His is the same old same old, no matter what the Covid crisis. “I just say to NSW, they need to get it under control,” said McGowan in December in reference to Sydney’s Northern Beaches outbreak. “They seem to be engaging in a sort of form of whack-a-mole, they try and step on a gym here or a restaurant there.” It was an ill-informed take. Berejiklian held her nerve and resisted demands to shut down Greater Sydney. By late January, the outbreak had been nullified.

WA’s ‘fortunate’ run

To many observers, McGowan enjoys being the provincial in the peanut gallery. No doubt he does. But like all leaders who bluster, rant, and criticise while blowing their own trumpet, there is an inferiority complex to match. So far WA has been fortunate in containing the Delta variant.

But in the event of a widespread outbreak, WA’s already beleaguered health system is unlikely to cope. In March, all three of Perth’s three major hospitals, Sir Charles Gairdner, Fiona Stanley, and Royal Perth, invoked a ‘code yellow’ internal emergency, signifying they had unmanageable patient numbers. The following month a seven-year-old girl, Aishwarya Aswath, died of sepsis at Perth Children’s Hospital after waiting two hours for treatment in the hospital’s emergency ward. A subsequent report found there were “a cascade of missed opportunities” to address the concerns of her parents.

Small wonder McGowan’s instinctive response to Covid outbreaks is lockdown. As for Victoria, little needs to be said about the performance of the state’s health system given the events of last year. As The Age reported, the Department of Health and Human Services warned the Andrews government of the precarious situation only four days after Victoria’s first confirmed Covid case.

WA Premier Mark McGowan. Picture: Colin Murty / The Australian

“In its current state, the health protection system does not have the necessary capacity or capabilities to prevent, respond and protect against current or emerging threats to [the] Australian community,’’ the budget submission read. “The health protection service system is our frontline defence against threats from the environment and communicable diseases and it is in disrepair. The government can no longer continue to protect Victorians and is exposing the community to unacceptable risks.”

In all, 820 died of the virus in Victoria, compared to 67 in NSW. It would be naive to conclude Andrews’ government has rectified the health system’s systemic failures. But would it be cynical to conclude that McGowan and Andrews, in blaming and hectoring Berejiklian, are fomenting anger against her as a means of political insurance?

McGowan is fond of telling his constituents that WA is propping up the nation economically. But if he continues to complain about freeloading states and Covid breaches, Berejiklian could remind him that as of late April NSW had taken 125,856 international travellers into hotel quarantine. Compare that to WA’s piddling total of 36,908. Over to you, big guy.

Silence of the sisterhood

Incidentally, have you ever considered why Andrews and McGowan – both white males – can get away with condescending to a female leader with ethnic heritage? The answer is obvious. Berejiklian is a conservative, and both male leaders are Labor figures. If the party positions were reversed, there would be endless accusations by the commentariat of misogyny, racism, and mansplaining.

I do not claim Berejiklian is being targeted because of her gender. She was complacent at the beginning of this latest outbreak and will answer to the electorate for it. I am simply highlighting the sisterhood’s silence when senior Liberal women are viciously attacked.

But I may have spoken too soon. In fact, a bevy of commentators with feminist credentials have reacted angrily to the treatment of the female Premier. Social commentator Jane Caro: “Women have exploded in fury at the clip that is circulating on social media … Who is he to be teaching the Premier … any kind of bloody lesson?

Sydney Morning Herald columnist Jenna Price: “I wasn’t looking for a reprise of Julia Gillard’s misogyny speech but I would have loved [the Premier] to appropriate a little: “I will not be lectured … I will not.” One more burden, the burden of silence, would have lifted from the shoulders of women everywhere.”

Fellow SMH columnist Peter FitzSimons: “Only He of Dinosaur Australia would have the presumption to tell She of Modern Australia what she will be doing, and having no clue he is entirely out of line”. ABC host Virginia Trioli opened last week’s Q + A show with the phrase “a Premier mansplained”.

And finally, SMH columnist Julia Baird, author of ‘Media Tarts: How the Australian Press Frames Female Politicians’: “his mansplaining manner was an instructive insight into how a man with his own orbit of power … can patronise [a female Premier] so publicly, apparently without a skerrick of self-awareness”.

But hang on – all those excerpts concerned the contrived “ordering” of Queensland (Labor) Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk by Australia’s International Olympic Committee representative John Coates to attend the Tokyo games opening ceremony. None of those examples concerned Berejiklian’s treatment by McGowan or Andrews.

Silly me.