Australia and New Zealand, along with much of the Western world, have been plunged almost overnight into a state of seemingly endless lockdown. In scenes not witnessed even in the depths of wartime, Aussies and Kiwis are practically confined to their homes – with police and even the army patrolling the streets to enforce government diktats. The once-unthinkable has happened in the blink of an eye.
For the time being, citizens are largely compliant. But, how long will this state of terrified acquiescence last? If New Zealand and Australian citizens are forced to face a bleak winter, watching their jobs, businesses, savings and sanity collapse, with no prospect of an ending, expect things to turn ugly.
There is no way we can go on like this for six months. So today is when the Prime Minister must tell us his exit strategy. Just when will Australians be allowed to leave their homes? When can we ask a friend over for dinner without risking jail? When will police stop chasing people out of parks and off beaches? When can we play sport, go to church or reopen the thousands of businesses that have been shut?
Scott Morrison and the premiers talk of these restrictions lasting six months until this coronavirus crisis ends, but they can’t be serious.
Even in just a few weeks, thousands of businesses are going to the wall. Half a million workers have registered for unemployment benefits. Six months will surely see economic wreckage to make a South American socialist dictator blush.
How do they measure that end? When not one more person dies? What if people are still dying in September?
We don’t know. But until then, the Prime Minister says businesses can go into “hibernation” — helped by the $130 billion he’s giving to subsidise wages — and then “bounce back”.
Why do so many journalists repeat this fantasy? Businesses do not “hibernate” when they have no customers for six months. They die.
There will be no “bouncing back”. The economy will be shattered, unemployment will be massive and the government will be buried in debt.
Journalists repeat the fantasy because most of them have never run a business or worked outside the media. As one of the few modern political leaders who’s actually held a job outside of politics, Morrison must know that “hibernation” is an economic fantasy to rank with the pie-in-the-sky nonsense of the Green-left.
What makes all this harder to bear is that so much of it is the result of political dithering. Despite the “hard and early” rhetoric, the Ardern government refused to move quickly on border controls or social distancing rules. It’s even less likely that Jacinda Ardern, who plainly seems to be making up policy on the run, has even the faintest idea of an exit strategy. In Australia, the NSW government’s incompetence led to hundreds of infected cruise ship passengers being turned loose in Sydney with no control.
Now, we’re all paying.
We banned flights from infected countries too late. Our airport checks on people flying in or disembarking from ships were too slack. We still don’t do enough to make sure infected people stay in their home quarantine.
True, Australia has nevertheless done extremely well to slow the spread of the virus and limit the deaths. Predictions of “150,000” dead already look hysterical.
Our toll was just 20 as of early on Wednesday [22 now]. But this low figure and the pattern of those deaths suggest there may be now a way to keep people safe that doesn’t come at this horrendous social cost.
As countries like Taiwan are showing, COVID-19 can be kept well below the impact of even normal seasonal influenza with nothing like the draconian social and economic iron rod in place right now.
Doesn’t it make more sense to focus intensely on monitoring people who leave ships and planes and doing more to keep safe the elderly and frail, particularly those in old-age homes? To step up quarantine controls, but relax the home detention of everyone else?
Another way is possible, and Morrison must explain it before people crack and businesses close, thinking six months of pain will be too much.
We keep being lectured that it’s for our own good and if people “just stay home”, it will be over. But, as new infections and the rate of deaths keep declining and people are still locked down, they’re not going to swallow that pill for long.
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