Honouring unsung heroes after a year like no other

On Sunday, it will be 12 months to the day that a man in his late 50s, recently returned from Wuhan, China, presented to the Monash Medical Centre in Melbourne’s east with flu-like symptoms. Testing showed he was Australia’s first case of the new variant of coronavirus. By Sunday, which was Australia Day, the nation had four cases. That weekend communities, families and individuals were reeling from a season of brutal firestorms that tested the nation like nothing in living memory. We did not know it then, but 2020 was to be a year like no other. Fast-forward to this long weekend; the end of the summer hiatus, and a chance to take stock. As always since 1971, when the honour was won by economist HC “Nugget” Coombs, our readers have nominated an impressive array of community leaders, medicos, scientists, sports stars and artists to be our newspaper’s Australian of the Year. This year, many such as Department of Health secretary Brendan Murphy, Melbourne GP Mukesh Haikerwal, who pioneered a series of GP-led COVID testing clinics, and researcher Steve Webb, who has uncovered some of the world’s best intensive care treatments for the virus, have done much to keep Australians well.

Some readers, wisely, nominated the “virus detectives’’ — the lab technicians, contact tracers and epidemiologists racing against the clock day after day to stay ahead of the pandemic — to be Australians of the Year. Contact tracers from NSW Health, for example, whose painstaking work stopped the virus dead in its tracks in our largest state, have made more than 228,000 phone calls since March as they sought to track the sources of community infections. As Ellie Dudley writes, the team had to build trust with strangers on the end of the phone to obtain the details of their movements over 14 days. Every minute an infected person goes undetected increases the danger of a wider outbreak. The NSW team, as Scott Morrison says, set the “gold standard’’ in tracking and therefore containing the virus. Without their skills and setting an example for other jurisdictions to follow, the nation would be in dire straits. All Australians owe them immense gratitude. And they richly deserve to be our 2020 Australians of the Year.

The COVID experience was far deadlier and more painful for Victorians, who suffered 820 of Australia’s 909 deaths and recorded 20,433 of the nation’s 28,750 COVID cases. Victorians’ diabolical experience during the second wave arose from the failure of hotel quarantining — specifically, the use of private security guards who lacked proper training or understanding of public health. As the independent inquiry by retired judge Jennifer Coate reported in December, the Andrews government’s incompetence was “at odds with any normal application of the principles of the Westminster system of responsible government”.

In no way was this fault of Victorians. They had no choice but to endure with stoic obedience brutal lockdowns, a dubious curfew and draconian restrictions that were soul-destroying and economically devastating. In doing so, especially during the second wave, they showed all Australians the risks and consequences when bad policies and mismanagement fail to contain the virus. The lesson sank in deep. More recently, they have had to cope with the state’s ludicrous traffic-light permit system, which locked many people out of their home state for weeks, at short notice.

As Caroline Overington writes, Victorians, at one point, were waking daily to 700 new infections, mainly in Melbourne: “To them would fall the responsibility to stop the spread within the city and to other states; to regain for Australia a sense of normalcy; to reduce the risks to those they loved, as well as those they will never meet, and never know.’’ They rose to that responsibility, confined to their homes for 23 hours a day, permitted to walk only within a 5km radius, masked against the virus, swaddled against the cold.

Parents and students endured months of homeschooling, more than families in other states, and greater mental and physical health challenges, yearning to see each other. At times they felt they might go out of their minds with frustration, boredom and fear. There was no footy. They lost their grand final. And they pressed on. “And no, they did not always agree with the decisions being made in their name. They knew also that none of this was their fault. But they took a collective decision to brace, and to hold; to fix the situation; to get it done. And they did it,’’ Overington writes. “For their sake, and because the health and wellbeing, the freedom and ultimately the prosperity of the whole nation was at stake.”

For these reasons, the 6.6 million people of Victoria are also, collectively, our 2020 Australians of the Year. We salute them, and the contact tracers, for all they have done. In their different ways, each group crushed the virus. The efforts of unsung heroes ensured we can turn up the barbecue, toast friends and family and celebrate the abundant goodness our nation has to offer. In a world still struggling with a pandemic that has cost more than two million lives — the US recorded 190,000 new cases on Thursday, and Britain 38,000 cases — we are indeed fortunate. “We have beaten the third wave,’’ as the Prime Minister said after national cabinet on Friday. But Australians are not complacent. We know we are not immune.