Memo to premiers: Covid a lesson in leadership vs management

The politicians and commentators living behind the political Brisbane Line with their sniping at West Australian Premier Mark McGowan quite obviously don’t know the difference between a leader and a manager.

The first duty of the prime minister and the premiers is to make sure that the people for whom they are responsible are kept safe and healthy. McGowan has done this for us in WA (and I say that as a lifelong conservative voter). McGowan has shown strong leadership by being prepared to make hard decisions quickly, even though he knows it might hurt him politically. As a result, we’ve been able to live life in a normal fashion without too much bother here in the West.

On the other hand, Gladys Bere­jiklian’s “management” of the Covid outbreak in Sydney has demonstrated that she is no leader, instead being a “manager” trying to please too many people or interest groups and as a result pleasing no one. Instead of going into a hard and fast immediate lockdown, Berejiklian shillyshallied and Sydney’s current agony is the result: two months of a Clayton’s lockdown with the prospect of at least two more with the much greater damage to the economy.

Should we learn to live with Covid? Scott Morrison and Berejiklian want us to do so by likening it to living with flu. A much better comparison would be Covid and tuberculosis. TB was defeated by the widespread vaccination given to children entering their teens. Instead of leaving it to become a dog’s breakfast of different rules around the country, Morrison should show some genuine leadership and legislate federally to make Covid vaccinations compulsory.

David Armstrong, Maylands, WA

Gideon Haigh’s identification of the four stages of Melbourne’s community response to Covid restrictions as fear, stoicism, resignation and a “spirit of sour vengeance … infectious as any Delta variant” is unhappily accurate (“In alienation, anger all we have left in common”, 16/8).

For as Melbourne’s case numbers grow, and the current lockdown is extended to early September, the desire to throw off lockdown shackles, regardless of the consequences, not only seemed to explode this past weekend but looks set to create a pressure-cooker environment in Melbourne over the coming three weeks.

From ubiquitous, quietly defiant, maskless gatherings, to publicised and organised large social groupings and party events, there has been noncompliance on a level that begs the question of a deliberate “party putsch” taking the place of earlier mass protests.

As Haigh pertinently asks, “But where to now?” when, increasingly, sections of the community eschew compliance? Where to for the community and where to for authorities? Particularly those whose duty is to enforce responsible community co-operation with Covid mandates?

Deborah Morrison, Malvern East, Vic

Our Premier, Daniel Andrews, says he had “shitty choices” when imposing yet another restriction on us (“Curfew is pointless, experts”, 17/8). Seeing what harm his ongoing incarceration is doing to my five school-age grandkids, may I say Victorians made a “shitty choice” ever electing him.

Alan Chipp, Hawthorn East, Vic

Head of steam

If only a few of the men in the AFL code wear helmets, with the intensity of play shown by some of the females in the AFLW, and several life-changing concussions already in the mix, as well as a death in South Australia, when will the code finally mandate wearing of helmets?

Prior to being contracted, are players each made to sign a legal document abrogating the AFL of damages caused by head injuries?

Let’s put some logic and common sense back into our favourite football code.

None of us wants to see our sports “heroes” end up like Muhammad Ali.

Eldert Hoebee, Torrens Park, SA

Super powers

I read Richard Gluyas’s article “Investment clout set to silence climate sceptics” (14-15/8) with increasing annoyance and dismay.

The voice of the chief executive of the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors, Louisa Davidson, I read, “is amplified by the $2.2 trillion pool of savings invested by her fund-manager members”. That sounds a bit like other people’s money to me. Did the other people give consent for their hard-earned money to be used for the purpose of Davidson’s virtue-signalling self-promotion? I very much doubt it.

It is utterly wrong for anyone in Davidson’s situation to take it upon themselves to bow to whatever fashionable cause takes their fancy, and divert their attention from their duty to the people whose money has been entrusted to them. ASIC is negligent in its absence of attention to this behaviour.

Peter Smith, Double Bay, NSW