For some business leaders and lobby groups, the return to lockdown in Melbourne is intolerable. The most prominent is the Australian Industry Group (AIG).
Last week it condemned the Melbourne lockdown, saying “widespread shutdowns is a strategy that can be used just once.” The following day it called for the reopening of the NSW-Victorian border on the basis that the Melbourne lockdown — which it had opposed the previous day — had removed any threat of community transmission of COVID-19 outside Victoria.
The carefully chosen words of last week, though, were replaced by an altogether harsher view articulated by AIG head Innes Willox to The Australian over the weekend.
State premiers, Willox complained, were trying “to outdo, outbid and outrace each other to smother any chance of economic recovery” — a couple of days after Queensland had reopened its borders.
“Putting up artificial barriers, closing borders and turning Australians against each other is not going to get us there.”
That coincided with the head of Flight Centre, Graham “Skroo” Turner calling for Australia to “learn to live with the virus”, which would get “society and business back to a reasonable level of normality”.
After dismissing herd immunity, and the tens of thousands of deaths that would require, as “not a great option”, Turner, or his ghost-writer, suggested that Australia had embraced a “model of states, territories or governments who have no COVID-19 objectives or clear science and data-based strategies”.
Despite complaining about this alleged lack of clear objectives and strategies, it wasn’t clear what Turner’s “living with the virus” meant beyond “containment by proven health and hygiene practices, widespread testing and tracing but without hard lockdown.” Unsurprisingly for the head of a travel company, Turner wants international borders and tourism reopened as soon as possible. The Australian backed Turner in an editorial.
Turner’s “strategy” would amount to letting the virus rip, with contact tracers — let alone hospitals — rapidly overwhelmed. That’s exactly the scenario that is unfolding in places like Florida and Texas right now. Funnily enough, that’s not very good for consumer sentiment, even without hard lockdowns.
At least “Skroo” is being consistent. While the AIG agrees lockdown can be tried once, Turner thinks they should never have been tried at all. In March, he told The Australian “anyone with any brains should not be worried about the virus… people should be worried about the quarantine. The disease is not a problem.” And “Skroo” always opposed border closure, saying : “the ‘experts’ said right from the start restricting travel is not working.”
He also attacked Scott Morrison over an early decision to ban gatherings of over 500 people. “It is so ridiculous. It’s hard to believe someone with a degree of intelligence came up with something like that.”
That was while Flight Centre was charging customers $300 to cancel travel and taking three months to provide refunds — before it backed off under threat of Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) litigation and a class action.
Not that that’s Flight Centre’s only run-in with the competition regulator. After a bitterly fought legal battle that reached the High Court, in 2018 the company was forced to pay $12.5 million in fines by the ACCC over price-fixing. Last year the ACCC pinged it another quarter-million for misleading advertising. Flight Centre has also been accused of wage theft, forcing staff to engage in mark-ups and a “cult-like” culture.
Why The Australian thinks Turner is a credible commentator on the pandemic, even by its own abysmal op-ed standards, is a mystery.
Willox admittedly pays some lip service to the idea of community solidarity, although how he thinks unleashing the virus won’t turn Australians against each other isn’t clear either. How eager will people over 40 be to go to work, socialise or shop with a virus spreading through the community?
The logic of Willox and Turner’s argument is that outbreaks should be allowed to spread unchecked by either lockdown or border closures, chased by a few overworked contact tracers urging “proven health and hygiene practices”. International travel would again be allowed, presumably without the quarantine Turner dislikes so much, opening Australia to new sources of infection.
How compliant will Melburnians be with the new lockdown? So far, there seems to be a higher degree of non-compliance, prompting yet more scolding from the media and politicians, particularly of young people. There’s a similar tone in Sydney, with footage of parties and pub queues being shared on social and mainstream media alike, to the condemnation of all.
But when Willox and Turner urge policies that would be dramatically more dangerous than some kids sharing KFC, they get an editorial from the nation’s most powerful media company backing them, not condemnation.
It’s hard to maintain an “all in this together” feeling when some senior business figures and a major media company want a world in which we “learn to live” with a deadly virus.
Money, Money, Money. It’s a rich man’s world.
But the old farts won’t be around to enjoy it – hopefully.
The rich(er) old farts imagine they can buy protection as they buy everyone & everything else.
Which is true, “up to a point, Lord Brass”.
As for Turner, his wealth came from a brief moment of history that will not come again – wide spectrum antibiotics, widespread exploitation, hubris & pig ignorance.
Good riddance.
Big business advocate “LET HER RIP” while they shelter in their luxurious bunkers with expert medical help on call, supported by their redneck radio 2GB shock jock mouthpieces also hiding in their luxury bunkers, its the mighty dollar they worship, bugger the old, disabled or cancer sufferers we must maintain their incomes and their Cayman Island bank accounts so its time to brainwash the sheep into thinking their sacrifice to the dollar is in the national interest and help send their parents, grandparents into the next world, this one is owned lock stock and barrel by the greedy rich of the world.
A friend says much the same as you, only she uses the word “sheeple” instead of “sheep” – I thought I’d pass that on as it made me laugh.
That neologism used to incur the wrath of the Modurders.
Right you are Braddy – Meanwhile governments take tax policy advice from professional tax avoiders like PwC, no conflict of interest issues there either….
The big business charlatans have got their fangs into we ordinary taxpayers well and truly, and it hurts like hell.
Sadly there is no next world for us humans unless you happen to believe the religious charlatans (the other major group) – if we thoroughly stuff this one, the world will survive OK but humans wont.
I don’t think there’s a CEO worth a pinch of dried cow dung in this country. The only way to get into the role in the first place is by being a liar, a hypocrite, a narcissist, a bully and borderline psychotic. Bonus points if criminal practices-friendly.
When were we ever “all in this together”, Bernard? Almost from day 1, the Feds have worked tirelessly to ensure that their wealthy donors suffer as little inconvenience as possible from the current crisis…..whilst happily throwing the rest of us to the wolves (with varying degrees of help from their State Counterparts).
CSIRO & Universities? Screw ’em. Arts & Gig Economy sectors? Screw ’em. Teachers, Childcare Workers & Healthcare Workers? Screw ’em. The unemployed & refugees? Screw ’em harder than anyone else.
Even now, we hear about plans to bring forward the tax cuts for the rich, whilst simultaneously talking up a raising of the GST rate. No, Bernard, there never was any “Solidarity” outside of the ruling classes.
One could conclude there never was such a thing as Team Australia… despite the marketing.
The travel industry is still in denial, fantasising about a return to pre-Covid social patterns.