As bad as 2020 was, it could have been much worse

When bushfires ravaged the country last summer, we had no idea that worse was to come.

In the closing weeks of 2020, many Australians are speaking openly about being glad the year is almost over. And understandably so: it was a year from hell. It started with drought, then morphed into bushfires, the pandemic and then troubles with our leading trading partner. There is no doubt it has been one of our worst years on record. Hundreds of thousands of workers lost their jobs. Possibly tens of thousands lost or will lose their businesses. Many relationships were strained, some fractured, and our collective mental health suffered.

How do the past 12 months compare with other times of adversity since Federation? There have been worse droughts (1895-1903) and more deadly bushfires (Black Saturday 2009), but the trauma of such events was localised. The pandemic, in contrast, has threatened the wellbeing and the livelihoods, and curtailed the freedoms, of every Australian. Fighting a pandemic is, as we have learnt, akin to fighting a war.

It could be argued that the worst year in modern Australian history was 1932, when unemployment exceeded 30 per cent during the Great Depression. Some people think Australia’s darkest hour was 1942, when the Japanese bombed Darwin, penetrated Sydney Harbour and advanced down the Kokoda Track. In my view there isn’t a worst year, rather an apocalyptic half decade between 1915 and 1919, when Gallipoli and the Western Front took the lives of 60,000 young men from a nation of barely five million, and the horrors of war were immediately followed by the loss of about 15,000 Australians from the Spanish flu.

While all loss is painful, it is somewhat consoling that these events – two world wars, a depression, two pandemics – have occurred over the 120 years since Federation. Perhaps this is the way with human existence: natural disasters such as drought, bushfire and cyclone punctuated every 25 years or so by an even greater catastrophe, often political and/or economic. By this measure those of us born in Australia after World War II have enjoyed a Goldilocks era of peace, prosperity and personal freedom. The coronavirus merely resets the clock, with another big calamity seemingly “due” around mid-century.

As bad as 2020 was, it could have been much worse. We were spared the breakdown in social cohesion, amplified by the pandemic, experienced in the US, France and the UK. We didn’t fray (or haven’t yet) into hostility and divisiveness; it’s hard enough battling catastrophe without dealing with a civic unravelling at the same time. We don’t know if the pandemic or other travails such as our damaged relationship with China will deliver worse to come in 2021. But what we can learn from others (and from our own past) is that adversity is best faced united.

Our national resolve was tested during World War I by the issue of conscription, and perhaps again during World War II with a niggling resentment towards Americans who were “over here”. But we remained focused on overcoming the issue at hand. This year, for the most part, we remained in good spirits and fundamentally united; we placed our faith in each other and in our leadership; and kept our cool in the face of foreign taunts.

Ultimately, Australia has been changed by the coronavirus. We are more focused on security, more inclined to manufacture locally, more likely to work remotely, more accepting of the need to adapt. I see these as positive outcomes. One thing we must never lose is our ability to remain united in the face of adversity. It is, and I think always has been, Australia’s greatest asset.