The right’s long campaign to unleash the virus
If there’s one thing we’ve learned through the pandemic it’s that the political right in this country is a death cult. Consistently, right-wingers have argued for measures that put business priorities ahead of public health. Had their arguments for how to deal with the virus prevailed, carnage would have been the result.
The first reported Australian cases of COVID-19 emerged in January last year. The federal government responded at the start of February by implementing a ban on arrivals from China, but then did nothing for weeks. Scott Morrison told us that everything was under control, that Australia was “ahead of the curve”, that people should just keep going about their business and that the health system was well equipped to deal with the virus, even as case numbers began to explode overseas.
The government was not prepared to ensure sufficient supplies of testing equipment and personal protective equipment such as masks and suits, or even hand sanitiser. No public health information concerning how people could limit the spread of the virus, nor what services were available to people infected, was communicated to the public until mid-March. The government refused to legislate for paid sick leave for casuals or independent contractors, making it next to impossible for them to take days off work to test and self-isolate.
Morrison’s right-wing cheer squad in the media did their best to downplay the severity of the pandemic, encouraging scepticism about the science, stoking hostility to public health measures and fuelling conspiracy theories. Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt sneered at “virus alarmists” and downplayed the pandemic, saying that it was no worse than the flu.
Finally, in middle to late March, with new daily cases rising rapidly, and more than six weeks after the first cases were reported in Australia, the federal government, under pressure from the state governments, began to introduce more serious measures to address the impending crisis. The measures included restrictions on gatherings and stay-at-home orders, shutting down some non-essential businesses and services, social distancing, limits on visits to aged care homes, the introduction of JobKeeper and the doubling of the dole, and international travel restrictions and fourteen days’ quarantine.
Domestic and international border closures and the restrictions on businesses were essential steps. They were also attacked relentlessly by the right. On 29 March, Bolt wrote: “Australians can—and must—be back to work within two weeks”. Gideon Rozner from the Institute of Public Affairs argued, without evidence, that the measures taken by the Morrison government “could very well cause far more damage than the health effects of the virus itself”. University vice-chancellors, tourism business lobby groups and airline bosses all screamed about the economic impact of the travel ban.
On 3 April, the Australian’s editorial decried the new array of social and economic supports as a “Whitlamesque freak show”. “Society functions best when government steps aside, allowing free enterprise and individuals to flourish”, the editorial read—by which it meant, damn the lockdowns, let the virus run free and let the sick, the elderly and the poor fend for themselves.
But the federal government, unlike News Corp’s columnists, was subject to public scrutiny and electoral accountability. With case numbers exploding around the world and the widespread realisation sinking in that this was a potential catastrophe for Australia, public opinion was firmly against the right. To avoid political annihilation, the federal government adopted measures that violated the Coalition’s entire ideological framework, relegating Murdoch’s rabid attack dogs and the bosses to the fringe, an unprecedented situation in Australian politics.
Nonetheless, Morrison wasn’t won to a new world view in which human need was prioritised above business interests—he was simply forced by circumstances to adapt. In mid-March, he refused to argue against large gatherings. The public backlash forced him to scrap his plans to go to the footy, but it was his way of sending a message to his supporters that he still didn’t quite believe in the measures he was forced to adopt.
The restrictions and border closures introduced in March and maintained until May were largely responsible for the sharp drop in new infections, from 500 a day at the end of March to single digits in the first week of June, even as the virus was spreading rapidly overseas. The drop in infections in Australia was proof that governments could bring COVID under control—proof that lockdowns and border closures worked.
Yet the reduction in case numbers was viewed by the right only as an opportunity again to go on the attack against the very measures that had helped get numbers down. The decision by the Western Australian and Queensland Labor governments to maintain their state border restrictions fired up the right even more.
Qantas CEO Alan Joyce and the Business Council of Australia campaigned without relief against the border closures, under the guise of needing a “nationally consistent” border policy. Flight Centre boss Graham Turner demanded that state borders be opened for the sake of “the economy” (that is, money for Flight Centre). Morrison encouraged them, joining Clive Palmer’s legal action against Western Australia’s border closure. Peter Dutton attacked the Queensland border closure as “having a very negative impact on people’s mental health and it is really devastating families”. The Liberal oppositions in both states also ran hard against the state border closures.
The right was again beaten back by public opinion. In Queensland, despite months of hostile coverage in the Courier Mail, opinion polling showed strong support for the border closure and for the state government’s handling of the crisis. The Liberal opposition was forced to abandon its plan to make the state election a referendum on the border closure, but it still paid the price, losing five seats at the October election and giving the ALP a handsome majority in parliament. In Western Australia, Premier Matt McGowan enjoyed an 85 percent approval rating. Morrison was forced to retreat, abandoning federal support for Palmer’s legal case, and the WA Liberals were also compelled to back off their campaign to lift the border closure. It was too late to help them. At the state election in March, the party was reduced to just two seats.
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The Victorian government’s decision to lock down a second time in July last year following a new surge of COVID cases was the trigger for the most ferocious campaign by the right. At the front line of the anti-government campaign were owners of cafes, restaurants and beauty parlours who, provided with an enormous platform by the mainstream media, insisted on their “right” to reopen, even if it meant sending thousands of people to their graves. But big capital drove the anti-lockdown offensive. Commonwealth Bank CEO Matt Comyn denounced public health restrictions because they were having “a huge impact on businesses”. Harvey Norman head Gerry Harvey decried the restrictions as “overkill”. Business Council boss Jennifer Westacott summed up the capitalists’ approach: “We just have to get used to living with this virus and open up as much of the economy as we can”.
Victorian Liberals backed the bosses to the hilt. State leader Michael O’Brien denounced virtually everything the Andrews government did to control the outbreak. Liberal MP Tim Smith attacked Andrews as “a fearmongering, doomsday propagandist, advised by green left activists”. Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg deplored what he called the state government’s “callous indifference” to the situation of small business owners. Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt also slammed the lockdown, saying: “Victorian businesses, big and small, are just pleading for a fair go ... Enough is enough”.
The mainstream media backed this campaign to reopen the economy. The journalists at Andrews’ press conferences acted as a pack of hyenas demanding “opening up”. It wasn’t just News Corp—the ABC and Age joined the fray. The ABC had daily interviews with business owners (it was almost always business owners, not nurses or health workers, or any other workers for that matter) complaining about the lockdown.
Constant coverage of opposition to the lockdown was designed to create the illusion of public hostility. But, as in Western Australia and Queensland, the right-wing campaign was beaten back in the court of public opinion. On 20 September, the Australian’s own Newspoll showed 62 percent of Victorians backing Andrews’ handling of the pandemic, a figure identical with the July poll, meaning that the entire press campaign had failed to erode support for the state government’s public health measures.
Unable to win the argument to “reopen the economy”, the bosses and Liberals turned to hypocritical arguments about deteriorating mental health and waiting times for medical procedures, as well as arguing that contact tracing was enough to protect people. Tim Piper, Victorian head of the Australian Industry Group, said that restrictions were pushing people “to the end of their tether”. On 27 September, Morrison, Frydenberg and Hunt released a joint statement criticising the Victorian lockdown, saying that they were “deeply concerned about the mental health impacts”. On 26 October, an editorial in the Australian said: “The cost to personal relationships, mental health and young people’s prospects is almost incalculable”. The Business Council’s Westacott wailed: “We cannot go on like this ... people are at a financial and mental breaking point”.
It’s true that there are mental and financial costs associated with containing the pandemic. But that means governments need massively to upgrade medical, social and economic support to deal with them. However, despite predictions of soaring suicide rates under lockdown, it didn’t happen; by and large, people showed remarkable resilience in the crisis in Victoria last year. A sense of common purpose in crushing the virus played no small role in this. Had the lockdown been lifted prematurely, COVID cases and deaths would have increased—hardly a situation that would have improved the population’s mental health.
The Andrews government was certainly not blameless last year. The second wave was the result of catastrophic failures in the state-run hotel quarantine, specifically the state government’s use of subcontracted private security guards provided with little training and inadequate protective equipment. Predictably, the guards caught the virus and spread it. The contract tracing system was also thoroughly inadequate. Then there was the failure to lock down properly until the virus was well and truly out of control and spreading rapidly through Melbourne.
Nevertheless, when it was finally implemented properly, the second lockdown worked—it crushed the virus. In the last week of July and the first week of August, new daily infections were as high as 700. But after three months, on 31 October, the state recorded no new cases, a feat that was maintained every day for six weeks. Even though the Andrews government had never publicly proclaimed it as a goal, elimination of COVID was the outcome. This was a significant milestone: it demonstrated that elimination was a viable strategy. From that moment on, if quarantine for international arrivals were managed properly, there would be no reason for the virus to reappear in Australia.
Victoria’s success flew in the face of the right’s campaign. Their argument that we had to “learn to live with the virus” presumed that trying to get the numbers down to zero would be too costly to businesses or that elimination was simply unachievable. Instead, the right argued, the country should end lockdowns and accept that people would continue to die on a regular basis. Their calculus was that the lives of others were worth expending to get business bank accounts back in the black.
The success of Victoria’s second lockdown demonstrated that the right’s argument was unsustainable—and cruel. It also set the bar for every other state government: any government that toyed with letting COVID spread at all would now be judged harshly by voters. The immediate response to almost all outbreaks since, with the exception of New South Wales, has been to lock down promptly, to track, trace and test and to lift lockdowns only when there is no further community transmission. That explains why the South Australian Liberal government has now twice implemented hard and fast lockdowns when fewer than a handful of cases have been detected.
The right had by now been discredited. Even their argument about “the economy” turned out to be unsustainable. The experience of countries that succeeded in getting COVID under control by implementing firm lockdowns—China, Taiwan, Singapore, New Zealand, Australia—was that the economy got going again. Public health was not incompatible with economic recovery but a prerequisite for it. That many capitalists prospered during lockdown by virtue of government assistance packages obviously helped. By contrast, in Europe, where governments lifted lockdowns prematurely, the virus surged again and governments were forced to reintroduce lockdowns, flattening the economy once again.
Lockdowns are required in Australia only because COVID continues to escape from hotel quarantine. Fixing quarantine is the only thing that will allow Australia to prevent fresh outbreaks—not just of COVID-19, but every virus that will succeed it. It has been obvious from the outset that we need serious, publicly funded and staffed quarantine centres in each state. But the Morrison government has continually dragged its feet. It has twisted and turned to avoid its responsibilities. It finally agreed to help fund a couple of dedicated facilities in Victoria and Queensland—but protecting public health will require dozens and dozens of facilities, something that hasn’t been acknowledged at all. Morrison is simply hoping that the virus burns itself out. All he can offer is a cocked-up vaccination program that is still six to nine months away from covering the whole population.
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The right has been proven wrong in almost all its arguments. But this doesn’t mean that it has surrendered. As soon as an outbreak occurs, right-wing commentators come back to their original anti-lockdown arguments. They are determined to fight for the “learn to live with the virus” approach that has been responsible for mass deaths in other countries, and to oppose the strategies that have been shown to work here in Australia.
Until recently, Gladys Berejiklian has been the right’s hero. The Australian Financial Review featured the premier on a recent front cover of its magazine with the headline: “The Woman who Saved Australia”. Compared to other state governments, New South Wales has rarely locked down and regards lockdowns as a failure of what the Morrison government refers to as its “gold standard” track, trace and test approach, which allows the government to respond to outbreaks without impeding the capitalists’ sacred right to make money. As the NSW premier boasted to a Liberal Party conference in May this year: “We’ve demonstrated in NSW that there’s an alternate way to heavy-handed lockdown. We made sure that we had the systems in place to be able to weather whatever came our way so that we would never go into lockdown again”.
The truth is, Berejiklian got lucky. And when her luck ran out in June with the appearance of the virulent Delta strain, the whole “gold standard” approach was shown to be made of lead. Even then, however, as the case numbers started to rise and the state government began to impose restrictions, Morrison tried to prop up the “gold standard” anti-lockdown narrative:
“Well, obviously I’m concerned but also very confident in the ability of the NSW government, which they’ve demonstrated time and again in dealing with these situations. I think the restrictions they put in place are understandable and common sense and I commend Premier Berejiklian for resisting going into a full lockdown.”
The Delta strain didn’t respect the Liberal Party’s right-wing shibboleths. Bereijklian’s “common sense” restrictions were woefully inadequate when confronted with the reality of a particularly aggressive strain of the virus. In July, the premier was forced to flip and impose a lockdown, first in a few local government areas of Sydney and then in greater Sydney and surrounding regions. But the government has acted far too late. Still rusted on to its libertarian, pro-business philosophy of not restricting capitalists, it refused to shut non-essential businesses. It refused to mandate serious public health measures. As a result, it lost control.
The people of New South Wales are now paying the price for the right’s eighteen-month campaign against lockdowns. It is undeniable that lockdowns work and have mass support when they come with income support and other social security measures. But the right continues to argue against them because it has an ingrained opposition to both social welfare and to impediments on profit-making. And the federal government is refusing to create a serious, countrywide quarantine system for all international arrivals because such a project contradicts the Liberal Party’s core value, so neatly articulated in last year’s 3 April Australian editorial: “Society functions best when government steps aside”.
