The Black Lives Matter protests at the weekend have wiped out any prospect of a sharply accelerated lifting of national pandemic restrictions.
They have also raised the risk of a new spike in coronavirus infections but most importantly they have undermined the essential trust Australians have shown so successfully for the last four months.
At their first chance, the premiers and chief ministers must make amends for this terrible miscalculation and reward all Australians with a lifting of as many restrictions as soon as practicable.
Australia’s health record on the COVID-19 crisis has placed it in the top tier of the world’s best performers and with an absolute minimum of social disorder. The key to this has been observance of restrictions on travel, quarantine, isolation, social-distancing, hygiene and unity, which have all relied utterly on the authoritative medical advice and political direction of the national cabinet.
The public have forgiven errors under pressure, miscalculations and overreach, generally approving of their federal and state political leaders and completely supportive of the professional medical advice.
There has been a sense of shared responsibility, shared burdens, a trust and mutual obligation with little protest against lockdowns, even when it meant heart-wrenching separations from dying relatives or massive unemployment.
Scott Morrison and the state and territory leaders have been able to rely on that trust to introduce massive economic and social changes demanding huge sacrifices. They have been repaid with acceptance in the hope that restrictions will be lifted as soon as possible.
The fractured and messy political leadership on the protests in defiance of medical advice — some opposing the mass gatherings and others approving or even encouraging them — has stretched that trust to breaking point.
The weekend was a demonstration of double standards and a betrayal of all the rhetoric about “being in it together”, which threatens to damage that public trust.
But it also demands — if there is no COVID-19 spike within the next two weeks — that the states lift the burdensome restrictions immediately the danger of a second wave has passed.
After the slap in the face of the hypocrisy of allowing some mass gatherings, premiers and chief ministers will risk serious damage to what they have achieved so far if they don’t allow as much freedom as soon as they can.
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