To land of the free, we’re a weirdly authoritarian mob

Australians are rapidly losing their reputation as tough, irreverent larrikins.

A protester holds a sign and a flag as she takes part in a rally against Covid-19 vaccine mandates in Santa Monica, California, on Sunday. Picture: AFP

“What the hell is wrong with your country?” I’m asked almost every day in the US of late. At dinner on Saturday night in New York three Democrat friends demanded I explain why police were shooting rubber bullets and pepper spray to enforce public health.

At my hotel a doorman, Danny, came up to me. “Man, I heard your accent yesterday and I just wanted to say, holy shit, the stuff I’m seeing in Australia I can’t believe,” he said, asking if police helicopters really had hov­ered over suburbs, barking mask­ing orders over loudspeakers.

Australians are rapidly losing their reputation as tough, irreverent larrikins. The nation has gone viral for hunting down “Covid fugitives” (people with a positive test), building remote quarantine facilities, shooting dogs, denying babies treatment in the closest hospitals and preventing families from seeing dying loved ones.

Forget Mick Dundee and Steve Irwin; Kerry Chant and Daniel Andrews are the new, hectoring faces of modern, safety-obsessed Australia. “That’s not a mask, this is a mask,” Americans would expect to hear in 2021. We’re seen as weak, naive and hopelessly parochial, an image reinforced by Western Australia’s zero-Covid policy to divorce itself from the rest of the country.

Paul Hogan with his alter ego, Mick Dundee.

The original Wildlife Warrior Steve Irwin.

Millions of people in the US have watched, stupefied, the normalisation of behaviour and attitudes that two years ago would have been seen as the hallmark of a cruel, authoritarian society.

Columnist Josh Barro, son of Harvard economist Robert Barro, called Australia dystopian.

“I’m surprised there isn’t more debate about whether what they’re doing is OK as opposed to a human rights infringement,” statistician Nate Silver replied. Indeed, our $25m a year Human Rights Commission has been missing in action on fundamental liberties for 17 months, per­haps engrossed in a forthcoming trans rights discussion paper.

“I’m not sure why Australia is an example of any sort of success that the US would want to emulate,” Silver told his 3.5 million Twitter followers.

Australia has become the butt of jokes on late-night TV, Andrews’ prohibition of drinking alcohol without a mask being a favourite. “There’s some crazy shit going on right now where the army is trying to keep people inside in Australia,” US comedian Joe Rogan, with 7.4 million Twitter followers, said this month.

The idea Australians and Americans are cultural brothers in arms has been shattered. Australians copied their old colonial masters on Covid, but more zealously. Americans, true to the legacy of the Declaration of Indep­endence, have eschewed, even in liberal California, the police heavy-handedness that became the norm in Britain and Australia. State borders never shut.

“It’s because they took your guns away, isn’t it?” Danny said. “They would never get away with that shit here.” America’s gun problem makes it difficult to boss people around excessively.

‘That’s not a mask’: Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews.

‘This is a mask’: NSW Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant.

Two weeks ago the US Department of Homeland Security issued a terror threat warning, not only because of the approaching September 11 anniversary but also because of “grievances over public health safety measures and perceived government restrictions”. “Extremists may seek to exploit … re-establishment of public health restrictions across the United States as a rationale to conduct attacks,” it said.

Every US state is flashing red on the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention’s Covid map, reflecting high transmission, defined as more than 100 cases per 100,000 people in the past seven days – a higher level than in NSW.

The health advice is no longer gospel. At least 40 US states have ignored the CDC’s demand for indoor mask mandates, supposedly necessary for such high levels of transmission. No state governor, not even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, queen of liberal piety, would dare publicly link curtailing basic freedoms to compliance with arbitrary health advice.

Australians living in the US are shocked, too, regularly filling my inbox with tales of despair.

“My wife and I and eight-month-old son have been here for 10-plus years and we’re reconsidering our pre-pandemic plan to move back due to concerns about Covid handling, the prospect of continued lockdowns and the overall desirability of Australia,” wrote John and his wife, directors at big four accounting firms in Los Angeles, understandably too fearful to reveal their full names.

“The Covid mania in Australia this year is unbelievable, particularly when viewed from abroad,” said Alex, an Australian businessman in Chicago. “No country ever prospered by being so cynical and risk averse. Hopefully sanity prevails one day so we can all see our families again.”

I struggled to explain to Danny why Australia’s response was so extreme: being a remote island fuel­led a perception the virus could be eliminated, lockdowns did seem to work at first, individuals have few if any constitutional rights and Australia began as a subsidised government project, entrenching a widespread faith in bureaucracy. And in smaller nations Covid stories crowd out other news more easily, ensuring a steady diet of 24/7 fear porn.

In Iowa recently I searched in vain on local TV for a daily chief health officer update on Covid-19, let alone an intricate parsing of the cases into linked, in the community and overseas.

None of these explanations is adequate, though. Switzerland’s Covid restrictions paled in comparison with Australia’s, Japan never locked down and Alberta, Canada, with about the same population as Victoria, practically abolished all restrictions on July 1.

I walked off to a cafe after chatting with Danny, asking the manager why he hadn’t checked my vaccination status – a legal requirement in New York since August 16. “I asked the previous customer and he yelled and walked out so I couldn’t be stuffed asking you,” he said. In Australia everyone has to check in, I explained. He just laughed at me.