Like many Australians, I was surprised to discover this week I am an anti-vaxxer. Previously I thought that to be in this category you had to have an irrational fear of vaccines. But thanks to Northern Territory Chief Minister Michael Gunner, we now know that type is but one of many in an insidious movement whose numbers are legion.
“If you are anti-mandate, you are absolutely anti-vax,” he said at a press conference on Monday. “I don’t care what your personal vaccination status is. If you support, champion, give a green light, give comfort to, support anybody who argues against the vaccine, you are an anti-vaxxer. Absolutely.
“Your personal vaccination status is utterly irrelevant … If you say ‘pro-persuasion’, stuff it – shove it.”
The extent to which we anti-vaxxers disguise our true nature is remarkable, and in many cases we do it unconsciously. In hindsight, I can see my being fully vaccinated as soon as possible was a ruse. So too was my pillorying of former Queensland Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young for her anti-AstraZeneca alarmism.
But the little things give you away. In May, while encouraging vaccination, I nonetheless advocated a non-confrontational approach regarding the vaccine-hesitant, as opposed to the anti-vaxxer.
“Harangue them your hardest, sneer at them – even threaten to curtail their rights – but you will achieve nothing, other than exacerbate the problem,” I wrote.
That is code for “Covid vaccinations are a killer,” you see. We do things like fallaciously assert there is a distinction between opposing vaccines and opposing vaccine mandates. We disingenuously maintain that government acts punitively when, for example in the case of Victoria, it bans indefinitely the unvaccinated from non-essential retail stores - notwithstanding the state’s vaccination rate of eligible persons will reach 95 per cent next month. And we do all these things knowing full well that to question the COVID decrees of premiers, chief health officers and other bureaucrats is tantamount to questioning science itself.
I realise now that one is either pro-vaccination mandates or an anti-vaxxer, and that there is nothing in between. My epiphany would not have happened but for Gunner’s magisterial display as he spluttered, pointed his finger repeatedly, raised his voice, and carried on as if he were doing an angry Marty Feldman impression. Now there is a man who is both measured and knowledgeable, I thought. Shove it? How edifying.
Calculated, opportunistic mischaracterisation
The best that could be said in Gunner’s defence is his remarks appeared to be impromptu and his reaction that of a man unravelling. Contrast that with Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese and Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews’ calculated and opportunistic mischaracterisation of Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s remarks last week.
To recap, Morrison was responding to questions concerning displays of nooses, gallows and
demands to hang Andrews by fringe groups demonstrating outside the Victorian Parliament. “Well of course those threats and the intimidation [have] no place in Australia,” he said. “We’re a civil, peaceful society. Where we have disagreements, we don’t handle them with violence, and there can be no tolerance for that … No matter how frustrated people might be that is never the answer.”
Having disavowed those elements, Morrison acknowledged the peaceful demonstrators who want nothing more than a return to normal life. “Of course, there are many people who are feeling frustrated,” he said. “Over the last couple of years governments have been telling Australians what to do. Now there’s been a need for that as we’ve gone through the pandemic, but the time is now to start rolling all of that back.”
Pointing out that over 80 per cent of people aged 16 and over have been fully vaccinated, he declared “That means Australians can have their lives back”.
This was, claimed Andrews, a case of Morrison “pandering to extremists” and engaging in “double speak”. Likewise Albanese denounced the Prime Minister, accusing him of “failing to call out, unequivocally, the violent and extreme comments that are made”. This is nonsensical.
As The Age reported yesterday, three public health authorities – epidemiologist professors Catherine Bennett and Tony Blakely, as well as immunisation policy expert professor Julie Leask – say Victoria’s vaccination rate is sufficiently high to allow the unvaccinated the same rights as those vaccinated.
What is more, as Leask observed, maintaining the status quo was not in the public interest. “To make the requirement ongoing is not proportionate to the harm it brings … It can actually give vaccination and primary healthcare a bad name by using [mandates] to weaponise and please the populace,” she said. “It can create these radicalisation effects,” she added, saying that the recent protests in Melbourne were unsurprising.
The defensive tactics that Albanese and Andrews have utilised in response to these demonstrations are familiar. They focus disproportionately on the aberrant element, thus falsely implying their behaviour was the norm. They impugn the motives of the organisers. They demand their political opponents ‘disassociate’ themselves from the actions of the demonstrators. And finally, they ignore and disregard the legitimate protests of the peaceful majority, insisting that they are not representative of public opinion.
Misreading the ‘convoy of no consequence’
You might recall that in 2011 the so-called progressive side of federal politics treated with contempt and derision a convoy of truck drivers and supporters who travelled to Canberra to protest the Gillard Government’s carbon tax. Far from being a “Convoy of No Confidence,” a chortling Albanese told Parliament, it was instead the “Convoy of No Consequence – where a couple of hundred people gathered with no support from the mainstream organisations. The people who believe in one world government,” he jeered.
Albanese had badly misread public seething at the government’s decision to abandon its
undertaking not to introduce a carbon tax. Then Greens leader Bob Brown referred to the convoy as a “moaners’; brigade” which was “in town to moan about everything in general and nothing in particular”. Neither man had the faintest idea this arrogance and contempt would feature heavily in voters’ reckoning come the election of 2013.
But commentators also suffered from this myopia. “The Convoy of No Confidence …. had no moral purpose,” wrote former Canberra Times deputy editor Crispin Hull at the time. “The aims of the protest were in confluence with the economic purpose of the protesters. So the protest was morally compromised. It was not a protest for a better society, for justice or equality. It was merely a selfish whinge - a protest by protesters for a bigger slice of the cake.”
Stand by your Dan
On Saturday, around 100,000 people converged in Melbourne’s CBD to maintain their opposition to vaccine mandates and the Andrews government’s draconian pandemic bill. Some of them also opposed vaccinations. Only one person was arrested. No property was damaged, and no police officers were injured.
ABC presenter Patricia Karvelas was oblivious to this. “What we’re seeing on the streets of
Melbourne – we are seeing extremism,” she told Insiders host David Speers. “We are seeing
something that I don’t think if you look at the high vaccination rate in this state actually reflects how most people feel, and I think it needs to be denounced very strongly.”
Obviously, it did not occur to her that one could be pro-vaccination yet opposed to vaccine mandates. Incomprehensible as it may seem to Karvelas, there are many everyday Victorians who want to see this bill fail, and with good reason.
Cam tweeted this yesterday. We have ALL been warning you. The street fascists are a radical extremist movement mobilising towards violence. They have to be demobilised. They have to be smashed. #auspol#springsthttps://t.co/FdZYU9oP6k
— Van Badham (@vanbadham) November 17, 2021
On that note, please spare a thought for Andrews, who in a fit of petulance declared last week that Morrison’s supposed ‘failure’ to “congratulate” the five million Victorians who had been vaccinated was a reflection on his character and leadership.
“I am offended on behalf of all Victorians,” he said.
It would be cynical of course to infer that Andrews was modestly suggesting in a roundabout way that the congratulations were not so much due to Victorians, but – well, you know who. And in exactly one year from tomorrow, his government faces the electorate. Think Tammy Wynetteeveryone and let’s get straight to the chorus to bolster a needy premier. All together now, Victoria: “Stand by your Dan”.
More Coverage
Risk that puberty blockers are a trap, not a release, for children
We need a national inquiry into the use of puberty blockers in children.
We need better tech to meet the threat of terrorism
All of the civil agencies who need to play a part in fighting the anti-Semitism and Islamophobic threat are not properly funded to undertake modernisation rapidly.