Post-Covid Australia will be born again

Victoria police walk past a homeless man along Swanston Street in Melbourne‘s CBD. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Daniel Pockett

It’s a question everyone is asking, or should be asking: how will the pandemic change the Australian way of life? The seven per cent drop in GDP in the June quarter places Covid-19 alongside war and depression in the scale of its impact.

Those who lived through the Great Depression were frugal for the rest of their lives. The generation that survived World War II became builders, entrepreneurs, procreators; they simply wanted to get on with their lives after years of adversity.

So what lies ahead for us? There are those who say that Australia’s social cohesion is being tested, that the pandemic is creating social division between the public and private sectors, between the states, between young and old. I hold a different view. In 1942, during Australia’s “darkest hour”, there was panic after the Japanese bombed Darwin and penetrated Sydney Harbour. But after the war there was unity and relief – a sense that the faith that had been placed in leadership was rewarded, and that everyone doing their duty was a recipe for victory and salvation.

Hardship and fear are galvanising forces, especially when sustained over months or even years. As a consequence I think we will learn the lessons and create an Australia that protects our values and our way of life.

At a political and management level we will review our alliances and supply chains. The relationship between the states and the commonwealth will also be re-examined. After all, who’s to say that another, more deadly pandemic isn’t just around the corner? Or perhaps a climate catastrophe that requires all Australians to pitch in, to take risks, to help the affected city or state?

In the Australia that lies beyond the lockdowns many of us will continue to work from home, and CBDs will be transformed. In the early 2000s, when open-plan hot-desking was all the rage, businesses jumped on board – not because it was a better way of working, but because it was cheaper by an order of magnitude. The same logic will apply with the rise of the work-from-home movement; it boosts the bottom line. The centres of our biggest cities – vibrant, densely packed with students, visitors and workers – will inevitably lose their cosmopolitan oomph as a result.

So what will become of all the office space in and around our once thriving CBDs in this post-pandemic world? Perhaps a goodly chunk of it could be converted and given over to social housing on a grand scale. Because more housing will be required for the poor, for the marginalised, for the victims of the pandemic in the have-versus-have-not world that awaits us post-Covid. If you think I’m being overly dystopian, witness the wretched social divisions on display in places such as San Francisco, where homelessness spills along the streets and between the mansions of what is surely the tech world’s most glittering city.

The brave new world that awaits us beyond the government’s current support program will require every Australian in every state to do their duty, to remain committed to task, to pitch in, to work hard and pay taxes, in order to help create a better Australia. That Australia will be organised differently and will contain a greater number of people marginalised in the pandemic’s wake, requiring not just empathy and sad emojis but big, bold, gutsy social planning. The kind of social planning that would bring the poor in from the streets, from the outer-suburban public housing estates, to the under-utilised accommodation in and around the CBDs of our biggest cities.