Coronavirus: Without the usual media scrutiny, the virus crisis is distracting us from all manner of evil

Chinese President Xi Jinping waves to residents who are quarantined at home as he pays a visit to a community in Wuhan in central China's Hubei province. The province at the center of China's virus outbreak is allowing factories and some other businesses to reopen. Picture: Ju Peng/Xinhua via AP

COVID-19 is a pandemic that is devastating countries around the world. The rapidly deteriorating global outlook is consuming the media as it seeks to satisfy the need for reliable news and analysis. In such a climate, people can behave badly without the usual degree of scrutiny.

Before COVID-19, the press might have scrutinised the Victorian Labor government for rejecting the royal commission into the bushfire disaster. The Greens might be criticised for demanding more welfare money after having rejected welfare that works. There would be more interest in the declining influence of independent MPs after years of minor players riding high on anti-establishment sentiment. And the Chinese Communist Party would not be enjoying praise for containing a virus with the same oppressive instruments that enabled it to spread — state and political correctness.

There is a pew in limbo reserved for journalists who write worthy stories; the articles that should be read but lack popular appeal. Like a toupeed widower on Tinder, worthy stories can sit on the periphery. And in this climate, a column without COVID-19 is very worthy indeed. The situation suits politicians who would ordinarily be held to account.

The CCP is brimming with such men of state. It is desperate for good PR after its central role in creating the pandemic was exposed. It is using classic propaganda techniques to redirect criticism and revise history. It is the bully that plays the victim to avoid accountability. CCP officials are sowing post-colonialist conspiracy theories to distract people from the party’s chief role in ­making COVID-19 global.

In Africa, it is creating a common enemy to keep the spotlight off China. The US is the CCP’s public enemy No 1. The party is manipulating public opinion through media channels whose affiliation with the Chinese government is not disclosed.

In recent weeks, the CCP has gone from denying the existence of the virus to rewriting history. In this parallel universe of CCP propaganda, it is the “victim of Western racism”, the target of a hostile press and the Mother Teresa of the COVID-afflicted world.

Yes, the communist state has been hit hard by the virus as a ­result of its party-before-people ethos and deep-rooted indifference to humanity. Rather than address root causes, it has launched a campaign to cover them up.

In Belt And Road News, the Chinese government was praised for bringing COVID-19 under control and showing “global responsibility”. Apparently, the CCP is sending “tonnes of medical supplies” and experts to Italy because “a friend in need, is a friend indeed”. Try not to laugh.

Italian virologist Giorgio Palu views the relationship rather differently. The former president of the European and Italian Society for Virology told CNN that political correctness played a role in the Italian disaster.

He said “a proposal to isolate people coming from the epicentre, coming from China” was framed as racism against Chinese people. The borders stayed open, the virus poured in, and it spread quickly.

The World Health Organisation is holding the PC line. It ­continues to lavish praise on the Chinese government and denounce valid criticism of the regime as stigmatising. It is a joint exercise in propaganda that ­offends common decency.

In recent days, the WHO has praised China for agreeing to supply face masks that are in short supply. So, is the CCP providing the face masks for free as a kind of reparation for its gross mishandling of the pandemic? Is it providing test kits to nations at no cost? Or are we witnessing the development of a truly obscene deal where the CCP could profit from the very pandemic it unleashed?

The Chinese government is not averse to turning a profit from problems of its own making. It is the worst greenhouse emitter in the world but demands billions in other nations’ money for supposed climate mitigation. It denounces the US for colonialism but is pioneering new forms of colonial power through the Belt and Road Initiative.

In the closed society of the CCP, there is no mechanism for people to hold politicians accountable. The one-party state denies the free press and suppresses political opposition.

It has sent US journalists in China packing because they ­revealed the CCP’s role in the COVID-19 outbreak. Yet it lectures other nations on solidarity, multilateralism and international co-operation.

Despite the CCP’s atrocious behaviour, Victoria’s socialist Labor government signed up to the Belt and Road Initiative. Premier Daniel Andrews ignored criticism from Labor and Coalition colleagues in Canberra. He dismissed federal government warnings about the national security threat posed by the BRI.

More recently, the Andrews government rejected the royal commission into natural disaster management. While Western Australian Labor Premier Mark McGowan and Queensland Labor Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk have agreed to participate in it, Andrews has opted out. Instead, he wants a Victorian inquiry, led by Inspector-General of Emergency Management Tony Pearce.

State Opposition Leader Michael O’Brien has questioned the inquiry’s independence. Speaking to The Australian’s Rachel Baxendale, he said Pearce’s advice had led to ­Andrews “walking away from the [last] bushfire royal commission’s targets on planned burning”. The green-left ducks for cover whenever accountability is on the agenda. Greens MPs continue to propose billion-dollar policies even as COVID-19 threatens to saddle the nation with intergenerational debt. They are demanding $1bn for a Save Creative Australia project. They want another $2bn for the not-for-profit and community sector.

Earlier this month, Greens leader Adam Bandt criticised Scott Morrison for “only pledging a third of the Rudd government’s $52bn stimulus”. Only?

Despite calling for solidarity amid the COVID-19 crisis, Greens politicians are making partisan politics of the global pandemic.

The party has accused the ­Coalition government of attacking healthcare and welfare “while propping up their big-business mates”. Who do the Greens think will pay for their totally righteous multibillion-dollar welfare plan, the freelance artists guild of “creative Australia”?

The COVID-19 panic is justified and understandable, but democracy will suffer if we stop speaking truth to power and holding the powerful to account.