Our cowardly response to Covid is a lasting disgrace

Without a dramatic reboot we could lose many of the characteristics that have made us one of the world’s most successful democracies.

Masks on ... Scott Morrison, Anthony Albanese and MPs pose for a formal photograph. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

The most frightening revelation of the Covid-19 pandemic is that we appear to be managing the decline of our nation.

Without a dramatic reboot – which is not on offer in this election – we could lose, permanently, many of the characteristics that have made us one of the most successful democracies in history.

If you want a Pythonesque example of how far we have fallen from the stoic, practical and sensible nation we once were, you only had to watch the start of question time on Wednesday when the Speaker organised an official photograph. “I would direct all members to turn around and face the official photographer – we’re leaving masks on,” he instructed.

Then, just to emphasise the ­directive and make sure there was no superspreader event, he said it again: “We are leaving masks on.”

Here, in the seat of government, 150 fully vaccinated people in a cavernous chamber duly donned their masks. Perhaps in years to come, some new technology will see through the masks in this photo so we can tell which politicians were smiling (the idiots) and which were grimacing (the smart, but foolishly compliant).

More than two years into this pandemic, with 95 per cent of the eligible population fully vaccinated, and almost 70 per cent having received booster shots, we need to procure a government permit, prove our vaccination status and submit to a Covid test in order to cross the state border into Western Australia. Masks are mandatory in airports and on planes, as well as in taxis and on public transport in most states.

In Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia and Tasmania, people must provide proof of vaccination to enter bars, restaurants and other venues.

In most states, teachers, police, transport workers and hospital workers cannot work unless they are fully vaccinated.

This despite all the medical and scientific evidence, along with our lived experience, demonstrating that vaccination, while protecting against serious illness, does not prevent contraction or transmission of the virus.

Vaccine mandates are less about pandemic control than they are about Covid theatre. This is as illiberal and odious as it is laughable. Police, nurses, teachers, bus drivers and others are kept from their livelihoods for no good reason. And we reject their service for the same.

In South Australia, under the threat of a legal challenge, vaccine mandates have been scrapped for police, teachers and transport workers. It is past time the other states followed suit.

We are entitled to ask what sort of a country we have become when we routinely see frightened people wearing masks outdoors in the sunshine, or others donning them theatrically, even on their social media profiles, as a virtue-signal about their faith in overbearing government.

The media wear as much ­responsibility as the politicians. Unless you have been reading News Corp publications, watching Sky News, or following a handful of sensible columnists in the Nine Media newspapers, you will have been swamped by hysteria and alarmism.

It has been clear since at least March 2020 – two years ago – that children and healthy young adults have no more to fear from Covid-19 than influenza or a range or other common infections. For children, of course, influenza was and remains a greater threat.

We have flu jabs, sure, but for the past year we have had Covid-19 vaccines too. And it did not take long to get them into the vulnerable (mainly the elderly).

When I queried a range of medical experts in the first half of last year why we would not remove restrictions once the elderly were vaccinated, the standard (and, I thought, reasonable) answer was that widespread vaccinations would prevent broader transmission. It was not long before that was self-evidently untrue, but the Covid-zero fixation had taken hold, and lives were put on hold and freedoms were trampled while we waited for ridiculously high vaccination rates across populations where the majority faced no serious threat.

Yet if you questioned these policies over the past two years, you were placed in the virtual stocks and branded an “anti-vaxxer” or a “granny-killer”. The digital giants censored any dissent about the policy approach, vaccination strategy, treatments trialled by medicos, or the potential origin of the virus from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

We involuntarily surrendered our personal liberties, freedom of movement and, in some cases, our livelihoods, yet we were not able to question what was being imposed.

Parliaments were suspended, cabinets were not consulted, and unelected bureaucrats with narrow expertise were placed in charge without any accountability.

States closed their borders, the Australian passport became almost worthless because its chief purpose, a guaranteed right to return home, was unilaterally abandoned. And Australians at home were not allowed to leave.

Our national anthem, and the very purpose of our federation, were rendered ironic. We were neither one nor free. Some of this was forgivable, perhaps, as our early knowledge and defences were pulled together. But our current state of play is ­inexcusable.

Children who have missed months of face-to-face learning are still routinely kept home again because their sibling, parent or friend is infected. Some workplaces are still largely empty as staff who are fully vaccinated (and are bound to be infected sometime) are kept home to prevent ­infections at work. For what purpose? So the HR team can win a company prize?

The persistent demands for proof of vaccination are mindless and discriminatory because the unvaccinated are no more or less of a threat to others than the vaccinated. The unvaccinated pose a risk only to themselves – and ­unless they are vulnerable, that risk is not high.

It must be their choice. Otherwise, if we believe our laws can make health choices for others, we need to ban smoking, drinking, doughnuts, motorcycle riding, and rock fishing – just for a start.

Our self-reliance was already being smothered by a blanket of government largesse. The pandemic has thrown us a doona. This week’s federal budget has shown that fiscal reality is something for our dreams.

We have sent future generations the bill so we were able to sit out the pandemic in relative comfort. It is the very antithesis of how our forebears sacrificed their adulthoods, and more, in war time to preserve what they had for the young and the yet to be born.

This time we have panicked children about something that was never a serious threat to them, ­ruining many educations along the way. The impacts of our response, from shutdowns to school closures, disproportionately hurt the disadvantaged.

Professionals were able to work from home, and supervise their children’s remote schooling on iPads and laptops, while their asset values increased.

But children in disadvantaged homes might have lost school as a refuge, had few home-learning ­options, or seen parents lose work and struggle to pay the rent.

For the media/political class, largely on the public payroll and never under threat of unemployment, working from home was a novelty – just check out the social media posts from ABC journalists, who were sadly ignorant about the plight of small business owners, tradies or casual hospitality workers. This helps to explain why the revolt against draconian pandemic measures was not reflected in much of the political debate, and was demonised when it did emerge.

Another factor was the lack of political differentiation. The ­national cabinet – which I initially welcomed as a unifying innovation – quickly became a forum of the lowest common denominator.

Morrison had the choice of starting a monumental constitutional battle with the states (he should have) or going along with their varying responses. Only Gladys Berejiklian and Dominic Perrottet in NSW had the courage and sense to push the nation towards the inevitability of living with the virus – lord knows where we would be without them.

Political oppositions, Liberal and Labor, were too timid to call out the Covid-zero approach, preferring to tarnish incumbents with every infection and death. And the media played the same game, with daily tallies as a macabre KPI.

Our traditional characteristics of self-reliance, stoicism, selflessness, distrust of authority, commitment to freedom and common sense fell by the wayside. Instead, we became a mollycoddled nation, handing over unlimited power to the very governments we mistrust, in the hope that we could be spared any confrontation with life’s only certainty – mortality.

Too many of us wanted everything controlled for us, like The Truman Show, only we volunteered for this abomination. And there is so little self-examination and debate – even now in a post-budget and pre-election environment – that it seems we have learned nothing, and would do it all again at the first sign of fever.

The absurdity was laid bare on Thursday when the courageous Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was beamed in live from some bunker in besieged Kyiv, ­addressing our political chamber of masked, socially distanced, nanny-staters eager to pay deference to his fight for freedom.

Zelensky is fighting our fight against tyranny; the one we gave up on in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria, the one Obama and Biden hoped might stop in Crimea.

If Zelensky and his people win, we will gain more in long-term ­security than they will ever gain from our aid. Yet we know if we swapped our leadership for theirs, our stoicism for theirs, Vladimir Putin would be leading a victory parade in Kyiv within days.