What’s an ordinary person to do when ideology infects the health crisis?

Partisans on the left and the right are using COVID to push a political agenda.

Daniel Andrews is the right-wing bete noir. Picture: NCA NewsWire/ David Crosling

Something strange and dangerous is happening within the ranks of the Australian political class and commentariat. Is it just me or can anyone else see the dangers of applying left-right political ideology to the pandemic? Commentators are more interested in pushing a certain ideological viewpoint than seeking answers to the practical problems that average people have to live with.

They are using this pandemic as a proxy to fight their political battles or have not adjusted to the realities of the pandemic. They are carrying the same pre-pandemic attitudes and ideologies and applying them to COVID to make arguments that are not relevant to controlling a disease.

Consequently, Daniel Andrews is the right-wing bete noir because of the terrible breach of hotel quarantine and his government’s reprehensible failure to be accountable. However, the right has deliberately muddied the waters by conflating the Victorian government’s necessary lockdown response with its initial quarantine failure. The lockdown, though harsh and damaging, was an immediate necessity, a practical policy response. But the practical issue went out the window, a casualty of ideological overkill.

Meanwhile there is NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian, who has been going around with a metaphorical halo over her head, praised by the right for her efficiency and outstanding response to the crisis. We may well ask: “What response?” The one she didn’t answer for in the Ruby Princess debacle, which directly caused 28 deaths and infections all over Australia? Now she finds herself in a dubious political situation, and is portrayed as the poor put-upon innocent victim.

However, one can’t help but see the glaring discrepancies in the response to these premiers. We all know that Andrews failed and must eventually answer for the quarantine outbreak, but Berejiklian has never answered for the Ruby Princess.

Why is this happening? The answer is sheer ideology, some of it extreme and not really about the pandemic. Unfortunately, members of the libertarian right are some of the worst offenders. Recently this resulted in the bizarre contradiction of the anti-lockdowners gleefully quoting the World Health Organisation — the same WHO they hacked into for letting China off the hook for the original infection.

No wonder the public is confused. The average person seeking information about the rules and practical courses of action is being bombarded by commentary on the social or economic consequences, infected by ideological viewpoints that deliberately are trying to politicise the pandemic — and it may be working.

Evidence of the political partisan motivation on addressing the pandemic was clear in Newspoll survey results when people were asked if their greatest concern about easing restrictions was going “too quickly” and risking a new wave of infections, or going “too slowly” and damaging the economy. For most the fear was still about going too quickly. Fifty-four per cent feared going too quickly, although the number who fear going too slowly, 43 per cent, is rising. But the key figures in the survey were on political allegiance. This shows the biggest divergence of any demographic. Most Coalition voters, 56 per cent, were concerned about going too slowly, but overwhelmingly Labor and Greens voters, 66 per cent, were concerned about going too quickly. That is a clear split over policy on political lines.

Melbourne federal Labor MP Peter Khalil, speaking on Sky News, identified the tensions between policy and politics when discussing the need to ease restrictions in Victoria. He said: “Setting aside all the politics — this is not about politics now, it’s about good public policy.”

Khalil admitted the Victorian government was responsible for the hotel quarantine breakdown, had insufficient contact tracing for infections and inconsistency about restrictions, but the challenge now was “to bring down the second wave so that the health system is not overwhelmed. It’s not a partisan thing.”

He is quite right. However, the ideologically committed commentariat just can’t help itself. Everything has to be turned into political gain for its side. The international situation provides it with enough fodder. The left takes its cue from the terrible statistics from India to the US to bang the drum of the politics of fear. Meanwhile, the extreme right of the “give me liberty or give me death” variety is taking its lead from the British right, led by publications such as The Spectator, formerly a journal of well-written conservative opinion and culture, which has adopted a herd immunity or “let it rip” school of thought about the pandemic. Its commentary borders on the deluded. These stalwarts of the right, from wonderful Wiltshire to woeful Wigan, are seriously theorising about everything from the lockdowns being just an “hysterical” response (a line followed by some in this country) to the pandemic being a leftist plot to destroy their ancient liberties. All because Boris Johnson wants to close the pubs a bit earlier.

The ideological partisanship intruding into the commentary on the pandemic in this country is as much a handy veil to camouflage the failures of Berejiklian’s government as it is a stick to bash up Andrews’ government. One can only hope that people will see through this and will concentrate on practical policy response. Because no matter which side of politics people support, their main concern is their health and the health of their families, not some large ideological project — a project that probably never interested them in the first place.