With 2020 clarity, visions of smallness from Rudd and Turnbull

It is more than sad that at this time, two former PMs are obsessed with their meagre legacies.

Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull share a chuckle in 2018. Picture: AAP

For all its real and ongoing trauma, the coronavirus pandemic has acted like a stress test of our democracy, showing up our strengths and weaknesses, highlighting what is important and exposing those players consumed by superficialities.

It is more than sad that just when this nation is united in a communal battle to maintain our public health, social cohesion and economic wellbeing, two former prime ministers are obsessed with protecting their meagre legacies.

Kevin Rudd is using this latest crisis as an opportunity to criticise all those who have followed him and boast about his own crisis-busting record. It is transparent and pathetic but, to be fair, it is at least understandable — after all, with more than $200bn spent since Christmas, those of us who have long criticised Rudd and Wayne Swan’s wasteful $42bn global financial crisis splurge won’t be able to do so with the same gusto.

For Malcolm Turnbull the times have conspired to make a mockery of his autobiography’s title, A Bigger Picture. While everyone from Scott Morrison and the Chief Medical Officer to the public toilet cleaner and pizza delivery bloke are united in the confronting task of stopping coronavirus infections and saving livelihoods, this former prime minister is settling scores and expound­ing his thoughts on bonking bans and paranoid media conspiracies.

The paradoxes end up being light relief in a time of coronavirus. The Liberal Party leader who claims credit for establishing the green-left Guardian Australia website; the self-proclaimed victim of a media vendetta who hand-picked The Guardian’s Canberra journalists; the man of destiny who twice was elected Liberal leader and twice failed but who claims to be hard done by; the socially progressive leader who championed same-sex marriage, introducing a bonking ban; and the former prime minister who chooses the greatest global health and economic challenge of his generation as the time to release a self-serving account of internal machinations and personal ambitions thwarted.

In the bigger picture, Turnbull’s career is the embodiment of a period of indecision and ambivalence within the Liberal Party. He was the personification of an experiment; a party whose foundation and success have always been found in substance was tempted to chase the easy, shiny life of fashion­able causes and media adula­tion.

The NSW moderates took their lack of conviction to Canberra and it failed because this is the course of the so-called progressives. Now the Coalition has returned to its prosaic and reliable roots.

I was Turnbull’s chief of staff in opposition in 2009. At his best he was economically astute and personally convincing, but he was always drawn to climate activism, desperate for a policy or political silver bullet and unconvinced by the reliability of bedrock Liberal values such as strong national security, economic consistency and caution on social issues.

You just know that Rudd and Turnbull would be envious of Morrison — the Prime Minister has had history thrust upon him and greatness could be his. The rest of the population, not so much — we don’t envy Morrison’s heavy responsibility or the diabolical dilemma of balancing health preservation against economic viability, the search for a least worst outcome.

Still, as we strip back our lives to the essentials, and miss the day-to-day social interactions we took for granted just weeks ago, there is a new-found clarity. As John Lennon brilliantly observed: “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”

Suddenly everyone comprehends the importance of border protection. Even the most idealistic multilateralist can see the supremacy of the nation-state. The uselessness and damage of Twitter-level alarmism and media catastrophism are laid bare as people appreciate the relative reliability of mainstream media. Partisan pointscoring and posturing punditry are shown up as pointless, and real information relayed from experts is prized.

The national cabinet cuts through the thick red tape of bureaucratic federalism and we dare to dream such sensible decision-making might outlive the crisis. We may begrudge our public servants their job security — and they may finally understand what a gift it is — but from nurses to Treasury economists, we can see many of them displaying their value and flexibility.

Despite our healthy streak of anti-authoritarianism, we generally comply with onerous new rules about public and private behaviour, making sacrifices for the public good. But the officiousness of some police and other officials acts as a reminder the nanny state looms large and must never be given an inch lest it takes a mile.

The hard left finally gets to see that the economy is not inanimate but consists of a wide range of people engaged in myriad activities for personal and mutual benefit. The hard right gets to see the intrinsic value of the lowliest worker in any enterprise — so much hinges on the work of the cruise ship cleaner or the supermarket shelf-filler.

Some of us may have realised how much we need each other; the daily chat with staff at the cafe, plonking yourself at a bar with friends or the casual catching up with other school parents.

Sport: we knew how much we loved it but now we see how many jobs and industries rely on the professional codes. And we are robbed of that social lubricant of sporting banter; updates on global coronavirus scoreboards are perhaps as fascinating, but altogether more grim.

We have a new-found respect and gratitude for medicos, living up to their Hippocratic oath as they knowingly expose themselves to the risk of infection for the good of others. We have long known the premium we pay for our world-class health system but now we see the dividend.

And we see how the private health sector is very much part of the national inventory. We have not needed them, and hope we never will, but the public and private health systems have co-operated quickly to boost national critical-care bed capacity from 2200 to three times that in a matter of weeks.

The confected bushfire season attacks on Morrison are now shown up. When called on in a direct national crisis he has been calm and thorough, qualities that apply equally to Health Minister Greg Hunt and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg. Party politics has been sidelined by most. Some self-obsessed commentators haven’t changed their spots but they just look sillier; especially when others, such as Twitter warrior and former Sydney Morning Herald columnist Mike Carlton, have recognised the sobering nature of this challenge and the impressive way Morrison has handled it.

For many working from home, or stood down, there may be new fondness for the daily grind and incidental friendships of the workplace. With any luck, more people will have discovered the comfort of frequent handwashing. We have been reminded of our great good fortune in being girt by sea. We have been reminded that science doesn’t dictate policy but informs it.

Life is precious, and we have seen, in large part, the young of this country make sacrifices to protect the old. We have done extremely well and given ourselves an opportunity to gradually reopen our society and economy behind the fortress of quarantined borders — who could ever complain about our biosecurity measures again?

We have seen once more why Australia rocks. And we know some things will need to change forever — our over-reliance on China, our lack of self-reliance for some manufactured goods and our standard public health prac­tices, to name a few.

After three months of astonishingly rapid developments, we are now in a position where Morrison and his team — with co-operation from the states, the opposition, business, unions and the public — are plotting our way out. We are far better placed than the most optimistic experts would have suggested early last month.

Happily, my favourite adage has held true — in politics nothing is ever as good or as bad as it seems. More than a decade after my year of living dangerously working for Turnbull, perhaps reading his book will be a welcome distraction from this bigger picture.