Scott Morrison wants this to be his Team Australia moment, a country brought together in its fight against COVID-19.
And in some ways, Australians have been all in this together. We’ve managed to turn down our infection curve in a way that’s surprised even top medical advisers.
But despite the positive collective response, there’s plenty of division still lingering. In politics, sport and business, uncertainty over how we move on from here has created some big rifts.
Unions vs state governments
On one hand, the pandemic has brought unions to the policy-making table, unusual given the Coalition’s traditional approach to them.
At the same time, teachers’ unions are in revolt against state and federal governments over the question of school closures.
The NSW Teachers’ Federation has savaged the state government’s plan to stagger the return of students to schools, with president Angelo Gavrielatos calling it an “incomprehensible” organisational challenge.
In Queensland and South Australia, teachers’ unions have raised serious concerns about the safety of opening up schools and are urging parents to keep students home. In Queensland’s case there are threats to suspend operations.
Chief medical officer Brendan Murphy continues to advise that keeping schools open is safe, as children and teenagers appear to be at lower risk of contracting and spreading COVID-19. But there is still a great deal of anger among parents and teachers over keeping schools open.
Universities go it alone
The higher education sector, hit with particular ferocity by the pandemic, found itself on the receiving end of an $18 billion government rescue package.
But the size and adequacy of the package has Labor out of its shell. Education spokeswoman Tanya Plibersek said the plan was a “fraud” which did little to alleviate the huge damage to one of Australia’s largest exports.
With some institutions facing collapse, Plibersek urged the government to provide low-cost loans and funding guarantees for universities.
Meanwhile, international students — now out of work, ineligible for relief under the JobKeeper package and unable to get home — are turning to state governments for help after being abandoned by Canberra. Queensland and South Australia have both recently unveiled relief packages.
Sport in meltdown
Without live sport we’re forced to settle for off-field drama. The NRL continues to surge in that department.
This week, CEO Todd Greenberg abruptly stepped down, with ambitious Australian Rugby League Commission chairman Peter V’landys widely reported to have pushed him out.
Yesterday, the league said it now had government medical approval to restart on May 28, even as sporting competitions across the world remain shut. But the players are less confident — Rugby League Players Association CEO Clint Newton said they needed more clarity about health and safety before committing to a return.
In other sports, relationships with the bosses have become strained. Cricket Australia, in dire financial straights, has stood down 80% of its staff with no guarantee of return. Staff are being urged to turn to Woolworths for work.
The A-league also remains in a parlous state. Players are frustrated over the league’s silence about the future of the game’s broadcast deal with Fox Sports. Seven of the league’s 11 clubs have stood down players with no resumption date. with a precarious financial future, who knows when they’ll return.
Landlords vs tenants
COVID-19 has been expected to change the relationship between landlords and tenants.
The national cabinet recently put together a model code for commercial tenancies, which emphasises both parties working together in good faith to get through the crisis.
But today The Sydney Morning Herald reported that some landlords are threatening action against commercial tenants who shut their doors to protect workers from the pandemic.
Vicinity Centres, one of the country’s largest shopping-centre landlords, told some of its tenants that shutting up shop constituted a material breach of their agreement. Whether it will take action is unclear as the federal government’s code is pushed through state parliaments.
The episode has put the increasingly tense relationship between commercial landlords and small businesses in the spotlight. Peter Strong, CEO of the Council of Small Business Organisations of Australia, called the threats “disgraceful” and said big landlords were using the crisis to expand their power.
“Our biggest fear is the big landlords will use this opportunity to bankrupt business after business,” Strong said. “While everyone is busting their gut, most of the biggest landlords just don’t think they’re part of Australia.”
The great neoliberal snapback?
The Morrison government’s brief flirtation with democratic socialism was never really going to last.
Like a broken record, business lobby groups and ex-Liberal politicians are calling for tax cuts to be the centrepiece of Australia’s post-pandemic recovery.
Last week, the Morrison government indicated it would pursue a pro-business agenda driven by company tax cuts and industrial relations reform. Confusingly, the government’s COVID-19 Coordination Commission chair Nev Power yesterday said the country needed broad reform to encourage targeted investment rather than company tax cuts.
In NSW, Transport Minister Andrew Constance has flagged privatisation as part of the government’s “silver bullet” to restart the economy. The pandemic, however, may have fundamentally changed people’s expectations of how interventionist they like their governments.
A quick neoliberal snapback may not go down so well.
Why on Earth would the government even listen to big businesses regarding tax cuts?
They’ve just given away well over 100 billion just to keep Australia moving.
Can’t business see through greed? No didn’t think so.
“In NSW, Transport Minister Andrew Constance has flagged privatisation as part of the government’s “silver bullet” to restart the economy. ”
And how does privatisation restart the economy?
And is there anything of value left to sell off?
Does anyone imagine that the only pockets deep enough to buy any assets still remaining to be flogged off will be offshore ones?
Just what we don’t need, more foreign ownership of essential services.
Anyone been gouged by the privatised Lands & Titles recently – procedures that once cost $50 now $500 and counting.
The one certainty is that big biz and its lapdogs will lie, obfuscate. bully and betray the populace to get what the megacorps demand.
As Portia said, take your pound of flesh but spill not a drop of blood on pain of total forfeiture.
Don’t dignify it by calling it industrial relations “reform’.
I would like to know what Michael Bradley thinks about the possibility of the commonwealth and state governments declaring a general state of force majeure for all commercial contracts; ie a declaration that all obligations rendered impossible to perform by COVID-19 and government-imposed restrictions are suspended until the impossibility is removed. That does not address, of course the issue of contracts under which one or both parties are not ‘commercial’ operators. I am for a deception of a rent holiday and a holiday from bank repayments and interest which would alleviate the ‘burden’ for those owing real properties only because of illogical negative gearing; ie the schema under which anyone how can ‘afford’ a second or more houses gets their investment partly paid for by those taxpayer who cannot afford a second house.
Perversely, I hope this Muppet government does pile into bullish*t and deluded neo-liberal alleged ‘solutions’. My feeling is that the mood in the electorate has already changed radically and that should ensure a slaughter of the LNP at the next election. One great ‘success’ of the neo-liberal project is that it convinced many many wage slaves that each is a capitalist. Many of them don’t believe that anymore and the LNP deserves to be the victim of that shift.
Ah yes – Howard’s aspirational voter, where are they now?
Still as dumb & deluded as ever but now angry at how their thrusting entrepreneur status has turned to dust & ashes in the mouth/
They’re looking for someone to blame and the government & its owners will be happy to provide targets, the usual ones, the poor, vulnerable & marginal.
The political faultiness will sharpen over the next six months to two years, as the economic and social carnage produced by our Covid-19 response becomes more apparent. Many long gloomy winters of discontent now awaits us, and I don’t don’t expect a single sitting government will survive their first electoral test after what they’ve done to us in 2020 – (when and if we’re allowed to vote again, that is!) There will be room for nimble players to make considerable headway in the fertile grounds of the newly unemployed, the young never-to-be-employed recent school and uni leavers, and the impoverished small business owners (and their families and employees) who have had their dreams and plans smashed by the almighty Depression of 2021…
But there no sign of that yet on the left – quite the opposite… The ‘left” (sorry that I have to use inverted commas – this was “my side” of politics until Covid) seem to only to want stricter and longer lockdowns…
There are some on the right who agree – Peta Credlin, for example, and many right wing governments have adopted a hardline authoritarian lockdowns too. But the thought does occur to me: Maybe Daniel Andrews and Jacinta Ardern are hard-core Leninist strategists? They’re figuring “the worse off and more impoverished the masses are, the more chance of revolution!”
(Only joking, but I wish I wasn’t…)