Matt Cunningham: Unhelpful Covid monikers do not help Territorians

We’ve all learnt how to live with Covid, now we need our Government to learn how to live without it, writes MATT CUNNINGHAM.

TRUTH is often lost during times of war.

As Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his troops into Ukraine last week, he said they were being sent on a “peacekeeping” mission.

It was a textbook application of what George Orwell observed in his essay “Politics and the English Language” more than 70 years ago.

The type of language “designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind”.

We’re not at war here in the Territory, but the pandemic has seen our leaders adopt an approach to language that mimics the efforts of some war-time leaders.

Matt Cunningham.

In the past couple of years we’ve adopted terms for things that – like Putin’s peacekeepers – seem the opposite of what they really are.

An abandoned workers village on Darwin’s outskirts, for example, has become the “Centre for National Resilience”, an absurd moniker that’s been not just accepted, but now abbreviated to just the CNR.

The other favourite phrase for pandemic politicians is the “new normal” which, by its very definition means different.

But as we emerge from this latest Covid wave it might be time for us to ditch the new normal and replace it with… well… normal.

Come Monday the mask mandate will be gone and the check-in app is being phased out. These changes are not due to any shift in the science or the threat of Covid-19. They’re due to a change in public sentiment. After two years we’re all fed up with being told what we can and can’t do. We understand the risks of Covid but we’re sick of being treated like children and want to be able to make our own decisions about our own behaviour.

Most of us don’t need governments to tell us how we should behave. When the Omicron wave hit the Territory there was no lockdown in place, yet many people made their own decision to stay home to reduce their risk of infection.

Vaccination rates in remote communities were low, until the virus arrived and they quickly shot up. We’re all assessing the risk of the virus and making decisions accordingly. We no longer need the government to make them for us. Yet the Government seems reluctant to let go. The changes to restrictions announced this week don’t go far enough.

Bar staff don’t need to be checking the vaccination status of patrons. What impact is this having on stopping the spread of Covid? In fact there’s a strong argument that vaccination mandates – necessary at the time to help drive up vaccination rates – are no longer required. The small group of people who are still unvaccinated will never change their mind. Their decision is a bigger risk to their own health than to anybody else’s.

Our Government has generally done a decent job of managing the pandemic. We’ve had fewer lockdowns than most places in the world and our death toll has been low. But there’s a danger the Government has become addicted to the power the pandemic has delivered. This is a Government, remember, that was on the brink of a one-term capitulation before the virus arrived.

If it has plans to extend the public health emergency it should shelve them now.

We’ve all learnt how to live with Covid, now we need our Government to learn how to live without it.

And it’s time to ditch the doublespeak. For if our nation’s resilience is dependent on a few dongas in Howard Springs, then we’re in serious trouble.

Originally published as Matt Cunningham: Unhelpful Covid monikers do not help Territorians