Australia’s march of folly has smashed my trust in government

I am reassured to see the flocks of screeching cockatoos swoop past my back balcony late each afternoon, and that they are still so loud I can’t hear on the phone. I am relieved that white peaches and nectarines, and mangoes, are as sun-kissed sweet as I remember. And that the sky is blindingly blue and the air pure and breathable. This is the Sydney I remember and to which I returned, less than three weeks ago, after living in New York for more than four years.

I am reassured and relieved by these perhaps pedestrian markers because so much else has changed that I am finding parts of my country unrecognisable. There are so many areas of policy that are being mismanaged or ignored by the federal and NSW governments that it raises the question of whether we are still even being governed. But it is the handling of the coronavirus that exposes the scary extent to which competence has collapsed.

Illustrators: Simon LetchCredit: SMH

This is what I witnessed first-hand living under the Trump administration, but I managed to temper my outrage, and my fear, with my belief that there was at least one country in the world that still practised good government.

At least you have somewhere sane to escape to, American friends would say after yet another Trump atrocity. Not totally true, it turned out, as the Australian government slammed its borders shut to all except movie and sporting stars, their political mates and those rich enough to afford $20,000 fares plus the costs of hotel quarantine.

I watched with admiration and anger at the way Australia handled the pandemic in early 2020. While we fearfully locked ourselves away in our apartment, venturing out only to buy food or medical supplies, disinfecting all surfaces, scrubbing our fruit and vegetables, Australians led normal lives, eating at restaurants, going to movies. We became “New York tough” – to use the mantra of governor Andrew Cuomo whose mesmerising daily television briefings were a sane contrast to the nutty utterances of the US president. (Only later did we learn that Cuomo had lied to make himself look good and, of course, he resigned in disgrace in August this year.) As the daily cases and deaths rose and rose, we banged saucepans and shouted from our windows in support of health care workers at seven each night, we shuddered as we watched burials in mass graves on Hart Island, and as they built a field hospital in Central Park and, in a street near our house, we knew there was a refrigerated truck outside a hospital containing piles of corpses that overworked morgues could not accommodate.

Workers move bodies to a refrigerated truck in New York in April, 2020.Credit: AP

We stayed safe, but we were traumatised nevertheless as life as we knew it changed. Possibly forever.

My brother in Sydney sent us face masks that were as unprocurable then in New York as rapid antigen tests are in Sydney this week, and while I railed against the unfairness of not being able to go home, I admired the way Australia was managing to contain the pandemic. Just as we had done with AIDS back in the 1980s.

While president Trump was opposing mask mandates, underplaying the seriousness of the pandemic or suggesting people could inject themselves with bleach against COVID-19, Australian public health officials presided over a system that appeared to protect most of the population.

But then, inexplicably from where I sat, policy changed. I had received my first dose of Moderna vaccine in New York in January, the second in February but, in Australia, the government flubbed it, failed to order sufficient quantities and varieties of vaccines leaving the population exposed. Maybe it was complacency. After all, by August this year Australia had had fewer than 1000 deaths. Maybe Sydney felt it was immune so premier Berejiklian did not act swiftly enough when the unvaccinated, unmasked limo driver was infected by an international air crew. Although there has been an impressive catch-up, with Australia now having vaccinated more than 90 per cent of its population aged 16 and over, we have been outrun by the latest variant. Omicron is voracious, repelled it seems only by those who are double-vaxxed and boosted (I’m glad that I got my boost in late November).

In Sydney, where the rates of infection are now astronomical (21,151 new cases statewide yesterday) the political guidance urges “personal responsibility”. Wear a mask? Until a couple of days ago, it was up to you. On Thursday national cabinet altered the definition of “close contact” – and hence need to be tested and isolate – to a four-hour exposure to a confirmed case in a residential setting. This has been described by Emeritus Professor of Public Health Simon Chapman as redefining the “entire field of infection control” by ignoring contacts that might occur in a workplace, while travelling or in other locations.

What we are witnessing in Australia closely resembles what historian Barbara Tuchman’s excellent 1984 book The March of Folly described as a form of misgovernment that she labelled “folly or perversity”. She defined this as “the pursuit of policy contrary to the self-interest of the constituency or state involved”. One of history’s most famous examples: “Why,” Tuchman asks, “did the Trojan rulers drag that suspicious-looking wooden horse inside their walls despite every reason to suspect a Greek trick?”

The NSW Premier’s folly was to ignore the effectiveness of masks (as the Prime Minister’s was to neglect to order vaccines). Dominic Perrottet wrote misleadingly in the Herald on Thursday: “… given Omicron’s hyper-transmissibility, the only way to keep its numbers down would be to enforce the most severe lockdown yet: borders shut tight, everyone staying home, workplaces shut down, communities crippled.”

This is not true but is likely to become a self-fulfilling prophecy because of his misguided direction to stop wearing masks and lift other public health measures just as Omicron took off. We can only hope the consequences are not as economically catastrophic as are likely when a rampant virus doesn’t kill (most of) us but stops us from going to work.

Me? I can’t trust my government to protect me so I’m taking full personal responsibility.

I’ll wear an N95 mask whenever I leave the house, keep my distance, not eat out or see friends. I managed to survive New York, and I’m going to survive Sydney too.

The Opinion newsletter is a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up here.