Australia needs a shot of common sense and empathy

Police talk to beachgoers on Noosa Main Beach about adhering to Covid-19 restrictions during a snap lockdown. Picture Lachie Millard

In Act 1, Scene 4 of Hamlet, Marcellus utters with prophetic foreboding that something is rotten in the state of Denmark. He is right, as anyone who has read the play knows, but when he wrote this famed line Shakespeare had his character speak words born of instinct rather than direct knowledge. Marcellus believes it, can’t quite pin it down or articulate it, but he knows something isn’t right.

As I write this, nearly half the country is locked in their own home. There is a pervasive, collective sense of agitation, bordering on hysteria in some corners which is a somewhat expected result of being locked up, locked in, and not being given any clarity on what a road forward looks like. Long before these past few weeks, though, something has felt wrong. Frayed.

Before you accuse me of being a Covid denier, hear this. I’ve lost family to this virus, as have some of you. I know Covid is real, and that our federal government’s prudence at the initial stages of the pandemic spared us the worst of what countries such as Italy and Britain experienced. Add to that, it’s also handy to be an island.

But I fret that 18 month down the track, as countries around the world are opening up and moving on in every sense, something is wrong here. Perhaps not rotting, but very definitely eroding. A slow descent into toxic indifference,

Last year, when stories first emerged of families separated as children were born and parents left this life for the next, it was unthinkable. It was so completely alien that these were the cards being dealt us. There was a degree of resignation among the outrage. But there was outrage. Righteous, fiery anger.

This stuff is still happening. Last week a Queensland woman watched her father pass away via Skype from a quarantine hotel room. She was fully vaccinated. She had returned two negative tests. But no, more unelected, unaccountable health bureaucrats made this woman watch her father die via a computer, alone in a hotel room.

Another man, a West Australian returned from Belgium, went on a hunger strike after his mother died while he was in quarantine. He also returned multiple negative tests but some WA health bureaucrat said he couldn’t kiss his dying mum goodbye.

If you’re rich enough, if you’re an actor, if you’re a sports star, you can come and go from this country seemingly at will. The rest of us miss births, deaths, funerals, family, loved ones, connection, life. We are having time stolen from us and given no clarity how long the thievery will continue.

Something is rotten here. A slow erosion of who we are. Our compass, resilience and priorities. This week the Prime Minister said he “could not countenance” people dying from Covid. I believe he means and feels that deeply. I would challenge him, though, to share what other loss he is not prepared to countenance. What researchers this week described as a “shadow pandemic” of lockdown fuelled domestic violence? The rise in self-harm across the country, especially among the young? The destruction of lives and livelihoods? Can he countenance mothers being separated from their newborn babies? Is he OK with the domino effect on everyday medical treatment that is being delayed and denied?

Yes, something is rotten in the state of Australia because if we don’t care enough about the vulnerable, the unseen, and those most damaged in pursuit of the arrogant fantasy of elimination, then we have fallen very far indeed.

And what of the rest of us? What are we prepared to ignore? The complacency both perplexes and distresses me.

There are people in this country who will glue themselves to the road in peak hour traffic to stop you and I from eating a steak. Yet during the past 18 months, fear has turned the rest of us to water. Slowly and incrementally we have forsaken common sense and proportional response in favour of indifference.

Is it any wonder? Stop and listen to the language of this season. With but a few exceptions, it is the language of fear, not the measured language of leadership.

Which leads me to the other virus, the one nobody wants to acknowledge. It’s called “I’m all right, Jack.” The symptoms are hard to spot at first but once embedded are increasingly hard to treat. Indifference, lack of empathy, selfishness, complacency, suspicion and fear. Fear that prompts people to dob on their neighbours, to shout “my kingdom for a 12 pack of dunny paper and to hell with everyone else” while the family up the road loses everything and young people attempt self-harm at alarming rates.

We are a nation, renowned the world over for our resilience and our mateship. Our “she’ll be right, mate” attitude in the face of adversity. Are we still? I hope so – if we do something about it while there’s time.

Gemma Tognini is executive director of GT Communications.