We’re sailing into the eye of an unimaginable storm

We are persisting with policies that cannot be sustained, proving the bigger the governments, the smaller the minds.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews and Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk. Picture Kym Smith

We will not know whether we have blown the pandemic response — economically, medically and socially — until the worst of it is over. Yet 10 months in, early fears that we have opted for expensive and damaging temporary measures to stave off a permanent pest have only grown.

After a year of jobs axed, industries shut, schools closed, families separated, events cancelled, travel prevented and communities crushed, this week we saw the fiscal side of the equation; it broke our budget deficit record, smashing Wayne Swan’s 2009 and 2010 efforts four times over, and notched up our first trillion dollar debt forecast.

On budget day, the health crisis all this was aimed at tackling had fewer than 50 people in hospital and less than a handful in critical care. Measuring risks, costs, benefits and proportionate responses has never been more difficult. Obviously, the reason our medical toll has been so modest so far is, in large part, because of the intense response.

But with state borders closed, Melburnians chained to within 5km of their homes and many businesses and families stuck in financial cryogenics, we must strenuously interrogate the effectiveness of every measure. Melbourne’s curfew provides an exemplar of what to avoid — now scrapped, we know it was imposed without medical or law ­enforcement advice and that it had no beneficial impact on public health.

The people of our second-largest city were confined by law to their homes for more than 50 nights for no good reason. Avoiding or dismantling this sort of government overreach has obvious social and economic benefits, and carries no health costs. If only politicians took a Hippocratic oath to “first do no harm”.

We might never know what else was unnecessary. Should pubs and restaurants have stayed open with social distancing and customer registration (much as they operate in most of the country now)? The nation’s best medical advice said schools should have remained open all along.

How many extra jobs would have been saved, how many more outbreaks and deaths would have occurred, and how much less social dislocation would have been triggered with more modest restrictions? What we do know is that, with the notable exceptions of Prime Minister Scott Morrison and NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian, our politicians are more interested in competing for space under the doona than emerging, however tentatively, to confront the day.

Opposition politicians have toyed with pushing for greater freedoms and debating alternative approaches, but it is easier for them to seize on every infection or death as a gotcha government failure. The way we are responding is both a symptom and a cause of our long march down the bigger government road.

Given mindless faith in ever-expanding government has people blaming politicians for the weather, it is hardly surprising that they expect governments can control invisible and highly infectious viruses. (Not the ­Chinese government, mind you, they are the one government immune from COVID criticism — go figure.)

Elevated expectations of ­government drive the sort of responses we have seen; the draconian lockdowns and border belligerence of the states, and the eye-watering largesse from Canberra. After working hard in its early budgets to pull federal spending below 25 per cent of GDP, the Coalition blew it out to 29 per cent in the financial year just finished, even though the virus only arrived on our shores in January.

This year, federal spending will top 34 per cent of GDP. Government has gone viral. We are now talking about a two-year plan, with all this pain, aimed at protecting us from the worst of the pandemic until an effective vaccine is widely available late next year. We were told back in March that a vaccine might rescue us within six months. Morrison has been as frank as possible in changing circumstances. “I really want Australians to understand that we need to be in this for that haul,” the Prime Minister said in April. “It will be months. We need to make changes that we can live with and that we can implement day after day, week after week, month after month.”

Yet the states and the federal government are running policies that cannot be sustained month after month or year after year. Too much is predicated on a game-changing vaccine that might never arrive.

Those who happily cheer for this lockdown approach — this idea of getting to “the other side” — should think about how silly Donald Trump sounds every time he heralds another drug as the “game-changer” or announces how a “fantastic” vaccine is imminent. Many world leaders hold out the same false hope, with more prosaic language, basing policy settings on it.

We need to consider what we would be doing if we knew there was no hope of finding a vaccine. Policies that presume no vaccine would protect vulnerable communities while we prevent the virus running amok and get on with our lives to the greatest extent possible. A vaccine, if and when it comes, would be a bonus.

This would be prudent. It is why Sweden’s experience is so compelling and why we should not scoff at nations with higher mortality rates — we can’t remain closed off forever so, without a vaccine, our most difficult times might be ahead.

Something like the current NSW model should be our starting point. Those able to work from home do so, large outdoor crowds and smaller indoor crowds are banned, social distancing measures are in place in pubs and restaurants, along with customer registration. There will be cases and clusters for the foreseeable future, but they are quickly identified, publicised and, so far, touch wood, contained.

Other states are being far less sensible. Victoria has been an ­incompetent and authoritarian shambles, while the others are obsessively determined to keep the virus out — even if it kills them.

Given this virus does not harm most people, especially the young, and that we know who is vulnerable, the NSW measures are proportionate. As a nation, we set out to flatten the infection curve and ensure our health system was not overwhelmed, and the only significant breakout was in Melbourne — even then, less than 2 per cent of the nation’s critical care beds were required.

It is instructive to realise the COVID-19 restrictions have virtually killed our flu season. “This is virtually a non-­season,” is how Melbourne University professor of microbiology and immunology Ian Barr described it to CNN. “We have never seen numbers like this before.”

This means our coronavirus shutdowns have prevented anything up to 900 flu deaths — and many of them would have been children. If you truly cannot put a price on any life, why don’t we shut down like this every year?

We need to ease up and gain perspective. Whether you are frightened by a trillion dollars in debt, women arrested for going to the beach or young people losing their employment and educational opportunities, the need for proportionality is clear.

Our response needs to be ­sustainable for a year, or five. Whether or not the coronavirus would leave a historic imprint on our nation, we know the response will.

The budget papers told us “Australia’s population growth is expected to slow to its lowest rate in over one hundred years.” Over coming years, net annual migration will be negative for the first time since World War II (we saw more people leave than arrive during The Great Depression and World War I as well, so this COVID-19 era is in ignominious company).

The budget also assumes lower birthrates because of economic uncertainty, and lower internal migration because of the constricted economy and hard state borders. The very basis of our federation — free trade and movement between the states — and the central ingredient of our post-settlement prosperity — positive net migration — are being squandered.

Unlike the Great Depression or the two world wars, this ­trauma is one where we are in control. It is our own decisions about how to deal with the virus that are determining the balance between health, economic and social damage.

There will be decisions that save lives and protect livelihoods, and mistakes that harm people and burden generations with unnecessary debt. But we need a broader debate about the policy alternatives.

With these heady questions and vital discussions to be had, Labor’s main criticism of the budget was that it did not mention women enough. The bigger the governments, the smaller the minds.