Coronavirus: Scott Morrison’s wake-up call: cut hysteria, do your bit

Prime Minister Scott Morrison at his press conference at Parliament House in Canberra on Wednesday. Picture: Gary Ramage

Scott Morrison’s message for Australia is blunt. People need to get a grip. It’s not the zombie apocalypse.

The hoarding of toilet paper is beyond absurd. And from Morrison’s point of view, it has become a matter of national shame for those indulging the hysteria.

“It has to stop. It is ridiculous. And it is un-Australian”.

For a prime minister to be forced into this sort of reflection is extraordinary.

Yet these are extraordinary times.

Up until now, the prime minister has been polite. He has embraced an understanding and appreciation of the anxieties people have about the virus.

But the hoarding hysteria has become a needless task for a government and a national cabinet to indulge when it is trying to deal with saving jobs and saving lives.

The issue of school closures is no different. All available evidence rejects the need, medically and economically, to go down this path. Yet parents and schools are taking matters into their own hands.

This is a demonstrable reflection of the new reality. The social dynamic has shifted to a point that will be difficult for the government to correct unless commonsense prevails.

This is the significant messaging challenge for the government at a time when its primary focus should be elsewhere.

The Prime Minister has found himself as the leader of a country in crisis. A real crisis. It is global, it is economic, it’s social and at its core it is fundamentally about lives.

He has laid out the road ahead for Australia in a plain and untainted truth.

Yes, the impacts will be unprecedented. Life will change for everyone. And while the measures may seem extreme they are largely based on common sense.

This was what people wanted to hear from their prime minister. It was Morrison at his best. Decisive, calm but calling it straight.

And the decisions that have been taken have not been taken lightly. Everyone around the national Cabinet table knows that with every social restriction made, thousands of jobs will be lost.

But there will inevitably come a tipping point where the economic effects of over-reaction begin to pose a greater risk to the lives of Australians than the health effects of the virus itself.

The measures he announced on Wednesday morning reflect that Morrison is acutely aware of the challenges ahead to balance the health risks against economic disruption, or destruction.

We may now be beyond that tipping point.

Politics are not removed from this crisis. More deaths are inevitable. But at what point does Morrison shift from what may be an acceptable loss of human life to a maintenance of the economic and societal foundations of Australia as a nation.

There are things the government can control and there are things that it can’t. Australia is not immune to the global response.

It is a wake-up call to everyone that the outcome of all this rests also with the way Australians respond individually.