The Mocker: Power-hungry premiers hold nation to ransom

State premiers Daniel Andrews, Annastacia Palaszczuk and Mark McGowan.

There is a totalitarian inside every one of us, and it is only the degree that varies. As for mine, I would be tempted to forcibly uplift every past and present Greens politician to a remote Pacific island. “Here you go,” I would say, “you have three months of supplies to keep you going while you decide how to achieve a sustainable carbon-neutral economy and a society built on the principles of social justice. Through hidden cameras on the island I would produce a reality show and call it “Golding’s Getaway” in honour of the Lord of the Flies author.

Regarding power trips, I was about to say Premier Daniel Andrews’ attempt to establish a government by decree for the next 12 months is his most obnoxious act yet. Silly me had temporarily forgotten that nauseating tweet this week in which he urges Victorians to get behind netballer Sharon – the character from the comedy Kath and Kim played by Magda Szubanski – to combat coronavirus. “Sharon can’t do it all on her own,” Andrews tells his captive audience. “Who’s in,” he asks, as if he were speaking to fans of Big Ted and Jemima.

Sharon can't do it all on her own. We need our best defence and our strongest team to beat this virus.

Who's in? pic.twitter.com/W7XMGcqscp

— Dan Andrews (@DanielAndrewsMP) August 22, 2020

Splendid stuff there, Premier; that little motivational homily alone was worth your recent $46,522 pay rise. As to whether Szubanski should have featured, she was a good comedian in her time, although of late any cause she spruiks inevitably ends up being all about Magda as opposed to the message. The fictitious Sharon would have been far better portrayed as lamenting that Victoria had fallen to a second wave of coronavirus, something along the lines of “You know, Kimmy, I’m not smart but I reckon I could do a far better job running this state than the arsehats we’ve got there now”.

The brainchild for this campaign is former ABC radio presenter Jon Faine. What he has planned next is anyone’s guess. Do not be surprised if a beaming Andrews appears on your screen in drag as the late Barbara Callcott of Colgate commercial fame. “Coronavirus gets into your lungs just like liquid gets into this chalk!”

Ultimately responsible for the appalling failures that caused Victoria’s second wave as well as hundreds of deaths, Andrews, by announcing this draft legislation, desperately resorted to the familiar tactic of a weak leader trying to project strength. Yesterday, he stubbornly defended the bill, saying it was “based on science and evidence that are proportionate to the challenges we face”.

That claim was a surprise to the chairman of biotechnology company CSL, Dr Brian McNamee, whose company is working on a vaccine for coronavirus. “It isn't sufficient rationale for shutting down society and doing what is now proposed by the Premier,” Dr M cNamee told The Australian Financial Review yesterday. “Many of us are stunned that our civil liberties and rights have been so severely taken away from us.”

In hindsight, not a great surprise. Once there were organisations devoted to protecting civil liberties, but now they largely exist in name only. Today you are more likely to read of overpaid tribunes defending “human rights”, of which the right not to be offended is paramount. Liberty Victoria is an Orwellian comedy: in 2017 it gave its Voltaire award to professor Gillian Triggs, then president of the Australian Human Rights Commission, for “her courageous stand on people’s rights, especially free speech”. Yes, the same Triggs who only a month before had publicly lamented that people were able to say what they like around the kitchen table at home. Meanwhile one of its former presidents, Julian Burnside, composes Twitter paeans for the state’s Dear Leader. No wonder governments have become emboldened in usurping civil liberties.

The Andrews government has done a good job. It’s a tragedy that the Victorian opposition has done such a pathetic job, with no useful suggestions. Not surprising, with morons like @TimSmithMP leading the charge https://t.co/sYLRLcwUJe

— Julian Burnside (@JulianBurnside) August 4, 2020

As for the hard border closures that have effectively defederated those jurisdictions (although they still have their hand out for federal moneys), I came across this letter in the July 1, 1952 edition of The (Sydney) Sun written under the pseudonym “Cascade”.

“As a layman, I would like to know whether Sec. 92 of the Commonwealth Constitution (supposed protector of the doctrine of freedom of trade and intercourse between the states) offers punitive safeguards to the ordinary citizen against acts in deliberate restraint of that freedom,” he writes. “Otherwise, Sec. 92 is a meaningless phrase as far as the rank and file of the public is concerned.”

Well Cascade, if you are still alive you have your answer: section 92 is a meaningless phrase, given most of the states have acted in contravention of it and the Morrison government is too timid to support a High Court challenge to restrain them. And it is not in a good position to lecture states about civil liberties while it continues to deny Australians the right to travel outside their country.

New Zealand has had a surge in new cases despite strict lockdowns. Picture: Getty Images

Just consider some of the language coming from the premiers. Western Australia’s Mark McGowan: “There is a clear message to any interstater thinking about coming to Western Australia — don't come, we don't want you here”. Queensland’s Annastacia Palaszczuk: “This hard border closure puts Queenslanders first”. Or Tasmania’s Peter Gutwein when he ordered all non-Tasmanians to leave the state: “I make no apologies for working hard to keep Tasmanians safe”. As a teenager I used to shake my head in disbelief when I read about citizens of the former USSR requiring internal passports and permission to travel outside their districts.

This is not just provincialism, but opportunism and demagoguery, an abuse of power made even worse in that electoral advantage is the prime motivation. For example, Queensland has an election in October, and Palaszczuk, long conscious of having been beholden to former Deputy Premier Jackie Trad, sees the pandemic as an opportunity to portray herself as a strong leader. Her stance is to the detriment of the state’s economy. At 8.8 per cent, the state’s unemployment rate is the highest in the country, followed by Western Australia (8.3 per cent) and South Australia (7.9 per cent).

Greens leader Adam Bandt. Picture: Tim Carrafa

But it is not just the premiers who insist on hard border closures. Greens Leader Adam Bandt also supports them, saying they should be maintained pending the elimination of the virus. An elimination strategy? Oh yes, I remember New Zealand instituting a nation-wide lockdown to pursue that. In June, a gleeful Jacinda Ardern told Kiwis “we have eliminated transmission of the virus,” the Prime Minister saying she “did a little dance” when she was informed there were no active cases. That changed this month, the country’s director-general of health, Dr Ashley Bloomfield, warning New Zealand to brace for a second wave of infections. As of today, they have 134 active cases.

The wherewithal is there for Prime Minister Scott Morrison to end the hard border deadlock if his attempts to persuade fail, but thus far he has not shown the willpower. The Constitution provides for Parliament to enact laws regarding trade and commerce among the states. But did not the Federal Court this week endorse Western Australia’s border closures in response to the challenge by Queensland billionaire Clive Palmer? Not so fast. As the court stated, the ruling dealt only with health and safety issues and not the economic impact of movement restrictions. As University of Sydney constitutional law professor Anne Twomey observed yesterday “There is a lot left in the case for the High Court to decide. It is not over yet.”

Given that border closures have suspended a fundamental constitutional right, you would think a shadow federal Attorney-General would welcome the opportunity for the High Court to determine their lawfulness, but not Mark Dreyfus QC. He has done the opposite, accusing the Morrison government of trying to “undermine” the WA government in initially supporting Palmer’s challenge.

“I don't think there's any real doubt about that side of the equation, that you're at a disadvantage by reason of the conduct of the Commonwealth.” Justice Rangiah nails the damage done by the Morrison Government’s disgraceful attempt to undermine Western Australia’s border laws.

— Mark Dreyfus (@markdreyfusQCMP) August 7, 2020

Similarly federal Labor MP and former Commonwealth DPP prosecutor Matt Keogh guffawingly tweeted that the federal government was “in cahoots” with Palmer.

How embarrassing for the Attorney-General @cporterwa and @ScottMorrisonMP from marketing to be caught out in cahoots with Clive Palmer #auspol #wapol pic.twitter.com/O9hhyCuGRO

— Matt Keogh MP (@mattkeogh) August 25, 2020

These appraisals would be forgivable if they came from partisan yokels, but not from lawyers, especially those aspiring to occupy the highest legal office in government.

As Business Council of Australia chief executive Jennifer Westacott observed this week, border restrictions are “impacting families, destroying jobs and crippling the Australian economy’s ability to recover from the pandemic”.

Seemingly that is of little concern to most of the premiers. Why would it when their eventual retirement means enjoying a fat pension at our expense? To paraphrase Kath and Kim we are witnessing our economy go from the affluent to the effluent.