Coronavirus: Not good enough for our leaders to just be followers

The debate over whether schools should remain open is one example of the misuse of expert advice and leaders acting as followers during this crisis.

Illustration: Eric Lobbecke

“We are following the expert advice.” That is what our leaders keep telling us during this crisis. They are following. It is partly designed to reassure us, it is partly designed to insulate them from blame. But it isn’t leadership. Knowing our leaders are followers shouldn’t be reassuring and it certainly shouldn’t insulate them from criticism.

Not when parliament has been suspended indefinitely and some media outlets are already dialling back their coverage. Not when the opposition has been shut out of the national cabinet. Oversight of executive government is never more important than during times of crisis. For context, parliament continued to operate during both world wars, the Spanish flu pandemic of 1919 and the Depression.

To be sure, our decision-makers have an incredibly difficult task, sifting through options to combat the health and economic crises the coronavirus presents.

But hiding behind experts in their chosen fields when making decisions with wide-ranging ramifications isn’t good enough, whether it is just a communications strategy or a reality as to how backroom planning is being done.

History is littered with examples of politicians making the right and the wrong decisions in times of crisis. Rarely, if ever, is the advice from any one expert discipline the only advice that matters. Even more rarely is there a consensus within any one discipline over a chosen course of action.

Yet we have commentators in this country blindly peddling the lines the politicians do. That advice is clear cut and uncontested. Remember: topic matter experts aren’t necessarily also experts at policy implementation. They often aren’t. And in the ultimate of ironies, many of the commentators I refer to (and political decision-makers, for that matter) are the same ones who question the near scientific consensus on climate change. Challenging the experts on their expertise.

While I have always accepted the near climate change consensus among scientists, I also have noted the divergent views among public policy experts on how best to act on that information. Zealots on both sides can lose sight of the nuance.

Turning our attention to the debate over whether public schools should remain open is a classic example of the misuse of expert advice and leaders acting as followers during this crisis. Let me start by making absolutely clear I do not have a firm view one way or the other about closing public schools. I recognise the multi-layered elements that must be considered before reaching such a decision. But not once has Scott Morrison recognised the obvious complexity when making public utterances.

Right from the earliest decision to keep public schools open, the Prime Minister fell back on the “expert medical advice” as the reason. Let’s logically test that claim.

Does anyone think, in a perfect test-tube case, medical advice would say it is safer to keep schools open than close them and lock down households? I can’t imagine too many medical experts would say keeping them open is the better option in that artificial binary choice.

Why? Because it exposes teachers to “super spreader” children, as the Chief Medical Officer once described kids. Because social distancing among children is hard. Because slowly but surely other mass gatherings have been shut down. Also, well more than 100 countries have closed schools already. The list goes on, but it doesn’t necessarily mean the decision to keep public schools open in this country was wrong, just that doing so can’t logically have been based only on medical advice.

There may be many valid reasons schools should stay open, in some capacity anyway, namely poorly resourced public schools: to help emergency workers with childcare if a lockdown isn’t yet in place (a whole other decision-making matrix, which deserves to be tested for the slowness to move), because online learning is inadequate and for other social reasons.

The point is, decision-makers might hide behind the advice they get from one compartmentalised expert discipline, but they shouldn’t. And they certainly shouldn’t be guided by only one element that goes into a complex decision-making matrix.

As it turned out there wasn’t (and isn’t) a consensus on what is best for schools, not among medical or policy experts. Private schools did their own thing, with their better resources, and so far have been vindicated, despite incurring political criticism. And now states are closing schools off their own bats, despite the Prime Minister advocating “kids should go to school”.

We also have seen evidence emerge that the medical community — and, yes, even among the medical experts the government hears from directly — is divided on what to do about lockdowns and, by extension, what to do about schools. One school of thought says go hard, go early. The other says space out your move towards full lockdown.

Leadership is difficult; commentary, by way of comparison, is easy — I freely acknowledge that.

But that doesn’t mean we should give our leaders a leave pass for acting like followers, and timid ones at that: willing to hide behind narrow bands of expert advice, misrepresenting the extent of the consensus among those same experts.

Equally, however, we all have to understand that this crisis — even if handled well — inevitably will see mistakes made and backflips enacted. Some are less significant, such as allowing hairdressers to spend more than 30 minutes with their clients. Some are more serious, such as the delay in beginning social distancing.

It was only two weekends ago the Prime Minister wanted to go to the football and his Chief Medical Office was shaking hands, extolling how relaxed he was about doing so. Then last weekend they scolded Australians for not practising socially distancing and heading to the beach in vast numbers, defying directives not to.

Australia should be able to manage this crisis better than most other countries, partly because we are so geographically isolated and because it hit elsewhere first, giving us a chance to learn from the right and wrong responses in other nations.

For that to happen, everyone has to do their part, which includes political leaders leading by example and doing so early, knowing that it takes time for messages to sink in. That is why the Prime Minister was wrong to sound as relaxed as he did about mass gatherings two weeks ago. It is why this paper’s editorials were right to criticise him for that.

Peter van Onselen is political editor for the Ten Network and professor of politics and public policy at the University of Western Australia and Griffith University.