Feeding the chooks while Australians feel the pain

With federal parliament sitting, the political gloves are off regarding Victoria’s mismanagement of its response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Anthony Albanese is running political interference on aged care but, by overshooting with moves to extend his emergency powers, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has opened the floodgates of discontent. Rather than dig in, Mr Andrews must take stock and call for help. Scott Morrison must be magnanimous in providing assistance to Victoria out of compassion for fellow Australians and in a spirit of national duty. Proper account must be taken immediately of whether existing measures to lock down Victorians are doing more harm than good. Warnings from health professionals that draconian measures are incubating a mental health catastrophe must be heeded. The risk is very real that the mental and financial impact of Victoria’s second-wave lockdown may lead desperate people to self-harm.

There is a lesson for everyone in Mr Andrews’s miscalculations and Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s politically motivated border controls. As Paul Kelly warned on Wednesday, closed borders, harsh lockdowns and parochial behaviour by premiers resurrect the discredited reactionary culture of Fortress Australia, where state protectionism was the route to political success.

Unless this is curbed, such sentiment flowing into post-pandemic political culture will leave Australia diminished. The federal opposition is right to apply scrutiny to the government over aged care but must be careful not to succumb to opportunism in parliament. Clearly, the federal government must do better on aged care but it has been able to demonstrate that despite some horrific outbreaks in some homes, the sector overall has to date remained free from COVID-19 contagion. Mr Morrison drew on his experience of having lost a parent in aged care this year to highlight an uncomfortable truth that few have been prepared to acknowledge. That is, people often go into aged-care homes for pre-palliative care and will not be returning home. The aged-care issue, ultimately, is unlikely to be one that affords the opposition long-term relevance in the context of the pandemic.

In contrast, without corrective action, the mess being created by Labor in Victoria threatens to be a liability for the nation for generations. Critics are emerging across ideological lines to question whether Mr Andrews has lost his way. The Australian Medical Association has listed the failings of his government’s COVID response. These include allowing Black Lives Matter protests and mismanaging the hotel quarantine system. At the core, the AMA says, has been a lack of transparency and accountability. Information on the pandemic must be shared more widely and must be better understood. This mirrors our observation on Wednesday that in his desire to extend restrictions on Victorians’ liberties, Mr Andrews has revealed a disturbing thirst for extra power and diminished accountability. Rather than enunciating a path forward, he offers a daily pantomime of openness that resembles Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s technique as Queensland premier of “feeding the chooks”.

The cracks are beyond question. Mr Andrews needs help and perspective to navigate his way out of a pandemic crisis and a looming social emergency. The increasing politicisation of the issue in Canberra and within state jurisdictions is not helpful.

Mr Morrison must find a way of breaking through the short-term political palaver playing out in the states. This is difficult. But Australians are suffering. Mr Andrews must find a way of breaking free from the leadership routine he has fostered. A first step is to end the curfew in metropolitan Melbourne that has law-abiding citizens restricted to home from 8pm to 5am. Lifting it would ease the torment. Mr Andrews’s government must then be more open, with a clear message on how and when remaining restrictions will be lifted. He needs to be clear with the public about the markers that will return life to normality. Now, more than at any time in our history, state leaders need a plan that is more than delegating leadership to the bureaucracy.