Emancipation day will be a cautious affair. From Monday, fully vaccinated adults will be allowed to hang out in bars in NSW but won’t be allowed to dance or sing, for, as 19th-century theologian Francois Xavier Schouppe reminds us, “even modest dances are rarely without danger”.
Nevertheless, Monday’s small step for NSW is a giant leap for Australia. Every state will follow sooner or later because if coronavirus cannot be eliminated there is no other choice. Even for WA.
Elimination was never much more than a crazy dream, even before the arrival of the mutant Delta variant, an adaptation that might have been designed to infect the fully vaccinated.
It can’t be easy being Mark McGowan, the Premier who has over-promised more than most, insisting until a matter of weeks ago he could stop Covid-19 at the borders so West Australians could continue to roam free within their 2.6 million sqkm bubble isolated from the rest of the world.
McGowan’s Health Minister, Roger Cook, told The Australian’s Paul Garvey late last week that lifting border restrictions would be a protracted process that won’t even start until vaccination rates in WA reach between 80 and 90 per cent. NSW and Victoria are graded as “extreme risk” jurisdictions. As of Friday, WA was the least fully vaccinated jurisdiction in Australia, trailing narrowly behind Queensland, at 51.3 per cent.
Freedom hesitancy is not hard to find, even in NSW, where there were unlikely to be exuberant celebrations, even if dancing had been allowed. The effects of the 18-month scare campaign will take some time to wear off, particularly given the near-inevitability of a spike in infections.
Until the arrival of vaccines, governments around the world relied on behavioural psychology to coerce citizens to comply with the most extreme quarantine rules imposed for over a century. The public were fed a non-stop diet of bad news devoid of context. New cases have been highlighted rather than deaths, hospitalisations and recoveries, which would have painted a very different picture of the level of threat. It would no doubt be news to most people that 88 per cent of those who have died of Covid-19 or required acute hospital care suffered from at least one other serious condition and that by far the best predictor of life-threatening infection is obesity. The population-wide strategy pursued in most countries would not have been helped by highlighting these and other facts governments, to varying degrees, have suppressed.
Early in the pandemic, the British government sought advice from behavioural psychologists. Ministers were advised to increase “the perceived level of personal threat” from Covid-19 because “a substantial number of people still do not feel sufficiently personally threatened”. Members of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviour have since expressed shame for their part in generating fear, with the belated recognition that mind manipulation cannot be countenanced in a liberal democracy.
“The use of fear has definitely been ethically questionable,” one psychologist told Laura Dodsworth when she was researching her book, A State of Fear. “It’s been like a weird experiment. Ultimately, it backfired because people became too scared.”
The elevated level of fear in Australia, even now, is exacerbated by the existence of crisis cabinets and the retention of emergency powers. For most people, the unprecedented use of force by Victorian police is not a sign that freedom is being eroded, but a reminder of how bad the virus must be.
Dominic Perrottet’s serendipitous elevation as NSW Premier has given a chance for our most populous state to pivot faster than most. Perrottet announced last week that his government would move out of crisis mode and get back to governing normally.
And about time, too. The extraordinary powers given to chief health officers since the start of last year has eroded the authority of parliament, diminished the standing of our state political leaders and devalued democracy. It has delivered the kind of policy blunders that become inevitable when too much power is placed in the hands of a few. We have seen the kind of tin-eared insensitivity to human feelings that results from empowering bureaucrats paid to follow the rule book.
Perrottet’s decision provoked a backlash from the freedom-hesitant elite who have been calling the shots for far too long.
Journalists were naturally furious at losing their right to ask fatuous and impertinent questions for an hour a day. One accused the Premier of disrespecting his chief health officer. Perrottet replied with the words for which we have long been waiting: “As the new Premier, we’re the elected officials.”
Australian Medical Association president Omar Khorshid said the association was “very concerned” by the shift in approach to the pandemic. “The NSW government’s crisis cabinet has morphed into an economic recovery committee,” said Khorshid, in a tone that implied he thought it was a bad thing.
Perrottet can expect more of this from the risk-averse, finger-wagging laptop class who cannot yet see the writing on the wall. He will be helped by the road map established by his predecessor, which includes a sunset clause for discriminating against the unvaccinated outside the workplace. By December the place will be pretty much back to normal He can expect encouragement from a Prime Minister driven by the imperative to reopen the economy and international borders. Scott Morrison is moving fast to wind back border restrictions and, in the short term at least, he can rely on the price-gouging airlines to keep number down.
Perrottet may even find an unlikely ally in the Premier of Victoria. Daniel Andrews has been winding back his rhetoric as far as his arrogance will allow, and the state appears on track for a fully vaccinated rate of 80 per cent by Melbourne Cup day. In Victoria, at least, it is shaping up to be the race that stops the lockdown.
Yet Perrottet is unlikely to receive a warm welcome at national cabinet from McGowan or Queensland’s Annastacia Palaszczuk, who remain hostage to the climate of fear they have created. Neither has shown any sign of the political adroitness required to change tack, nor the courage required to admit to their respective states the strategy they have pursued has inevitably failed. The reckoning is coming, whether they are ready or not.
Nick Cater is executive director of the Menzies Research Centre.
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