Initially one of the success stories of the global pandemic, the island monarchy of Australia is now struggling to contain a COVID-19 outbreak that has shuttered a major town and torn through the nursing homes along the east coast of the country.
After months of suppression, the latest outbreak originated in the southern capital of Melbourne after the virus escaped quarantine — something now the subject of bitter recriminations between regional governor Daniel Andrews and his political foes. Thousands have sickened and hundreds died as Melbourne — once rated the world’s most liveable city — returned to lockdown, silencing its quaint trams and emptying the streets around the Yarra, the river that wends Danube-like through Australia’s most European city.
The national government of Scott Morrison — who came to power in a 2018 putsch — is also in the firing line over infection outbreaks in nursing homes, which his government funds and controls. A special inquiry recently heard that Morrison had no plan for protecting the nation’s nursing home residents from infection despite months of preparation time and a March outbreak in nursing homes in Sydney, the nation’s capital 900kms north of Melbourne.
Sydney premier Gladys Berejiklian, an ally of Morrison, faces her own crisis after her officials, with the agreement of Morrison’s border militia, allowed a cruise ship to dock and disgorge hundreds of infected passengers into the country. The death toll now stands at over 20 from that incident, which has soured Berejiklian’s attempts to encourage tax haven-based cruise lines to come to her city.
Other provinces across the 4000 kilometre-wide island have now sealed their borders against possible infections from Sydney and Melbourne. Morrison has also shut down the nation’s airports to prevent Australians from escaping the country, although high-profile business associates of the ruling Coalition can travel without restrictions.
The pandemic has brought Australia’s long run of economic luck to an end. Buoyed by massive exports of iron ore to China, Australia managed a world record 28 years without recession but now faces a sharp contraction and long jobless queues outside government offices. A spat with Beijing has also endangered the country’s vital tourism and education sectors.
Morrison — who has the backing of media magnate Rupert Murdoch and mining millionaires like Clive Palmer, famous for promising to rebuild the Titanic — has problems elsewhere.
Cronies of Morrison are mired in scandals involving the purchasing of water rights (a valuable commodity in the bone-dry nation), the forging of documents and the rorting of government funds to help Morrison win last year’s poll. He is also under fire for allowing key financiers of the party, mining and fossil fuel interests, to draft new policies to end the country’s depression.
But it is the nursing home crisis that might pose the biggest threat to the strongman’s grip on power, with the leader forced to apologise for deaths, though stopping short of accepting responsibility. Regime officials have scrambled to defend the lack of regulation, advice and equipment supplies to a sector that has until now has enjoyed rapid growth for an increasing number of private companies, fueled by public funding.
This week a fresh scandal emerged. Morrison’s internal security force, used for raiding journalists, lawyers and whistleblowers who threaten his party, was found to have leaked details of a major investigation into possible war crimes by Australian troops during the nation’s unsuccessful military venture into Afghanistan. A loyal vassal state of imperial power the United States, Australia joined an invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and its troops remained for most of the two-decade-long war that ensued.
Australia lacks any anti-corruption or integrity bodies, allowing misconduct and scandal to flourish at the national level, with hundreds of millions of dollars a year being traded between powerful interests and political parties in exchange for influence, access and the opportunity to dictate policy. The nation’s rapidly shrinking media is increasingly unable to hold the regime to account, especially after Morrison slashed funding to the nation’s public broadcasters in response to critical articles and reportage.
What was once the smiling face of a welcoming Land Down Under increasingly bears the scars of corruption and scandal.
Did we miss anything in our postcard from Australia? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication in Crikey’s Your Say section.
Wow… Bernard, you have outdone yourself.
A truly superb piece of writing.
Accurate and biting.
Only one tiny quibble tho’ ..
It is true Government for the Rich and Feckless has been at the helm of the leaking tub SS Austalasian Leader, for 7 + years now, but it is successive governments that all share the responsibility for their silly but understandable mistake of failing to prepare the country for just such (an) outbreak(s).
After all, we were warned in 2002/3 with SARS (V1) and before that in the 1970s with HIV-AIDS, that such widely spreading diseases were possible.
Incidentally, in all the dramatic and breathily exciting news coverage of SARS (V2) it is forgotten that HIV-AIDS is still killing between 2000 and 4000 people PER DAY around the world but fortunately for our little island, mainly (60%) in the regions around the Island of Africa
I agree that the forward planning for a pandemic was flawed, however, if you look back to the policies of the A part of the ATM government, a decision, was taken to reduce the government’s reliance upon holding stock for the National Stockpile, completely in accordance with the “Lying little rodent” policies of devolving to the lowest common denominator, of slinging your mates some of the tax money and hoping that they hold a bit more stock on their wholesale selves.
No one could have foreseen that a number of staunch patriots would slip under our government’s noses, buy up all the face shields, masks, gloves, plastic gowns and just about anything else that was useful to fight an epidemic and then ship it all back to China in fact to Wuhan.
One more picture of these patriots claiming to be dinky di, ridgy didge Aussie, Aussie surrounded by Australian flags and there will be an open season declared on scoundrels wrapped in the Australian flag, that could put some interest in it, don’t you think?
This would have been OK for a little while, but, by the time a pandemic was declared and the National Stockpile warehouses looked alarmingly empty and our usually reliable wholesale medical warehouses were informing us that all the stock needed was on back order from the manufacturers in Wuhan, the initial ground Zero of the pandemic.
Yes, the lying little rodent’s policy blew up in our faces and no, you can’t rely upon the free market for medical supplies in a pandemic.
So, the next bit is stomach churning! I have never before read about an agist policy that came from the Federal Government which in effect said “We will not allow residents of Nursing Homes to take up hospital beds” and As we don’t have enough PPE we will ration it to nursing homes with an outbreak and as such, we understand that Covid19 will rip through the nursing home like a flame through straw”.
Manage the deaths as you can! (Synopsis of phone hookup regarding federal government policy, Saturday Paper)
Would the chameleon shyster Scottie from marketing care to explain his statement the “Everyone should be able to see their mum on mother’s day” in light of the lockout policy brought in by nursing homes to protect the frail residents??
Was this meant to encourage Covid19 infections in nursing homes to make room for the 100,000 waiting for help at home??
I’m not sure why you would need to anticipate exactly every such tactic, but any sensible grubbiment will have provisions in place that prevent removal of vital resources and supplies from any area of need, including the entire island.
ie Protect the national stocks.
I doubt anything was meant ot encourage infections BUT it is a simple fact of life that medical/emergency resources often have to be triaged. IT is a luxury in a 1st World country that demented Nonagenarians with half a functioning kidney can be admitted to an ICU to be “kept alive” …
It also explains why, on average, approx 80% of all healthcare $$$$s are spent on any individual in the last 6 mo0nths of their life … so by definition and logic are utterly wasted.
Clearly as we enter a world where SARS v2 will be an ever present companion, we simply have to have a debate about such matters.
Sorry for all the typos… Why no edit button still????????
On that quibble…I happened to hear on the radio this very arvo’ one K. Rudd mention an effort in ’08-’09 to establish some sort of set-up that may have seen Oz a bit better prepared to deal with a pandemic.
Not trying to defend anyone on either side Fed. Gov. – wise, just noting that the thought was there back then .
Brilliant stuff. Thank you Mr Keane
Not sure if you are serious Bernard Keane. Australia doesn’t have regional governors, it has Premiers, just for starters. Was this piece meant to be funny? or am i missing the point here?
I took that to be a stylistic flourish to give the flavour of a report from an outside observer (the “postcard from…”) who e.g. gets the basic relationship between states and federal government but mistakes the exact terminology.
Agnes: this article is written in the same sort of ‘voice’ that papers like the New York Times write about your average “undeveloped” nation: serious, supposedly impartial, and using words like “regime” and “strongman” to indicate their own country’ superiority. The underlying joke is that countries like the US and Australia are getting a bit Third World themselves.
That’s the joke. It’s how William Boot, the gardening writer and accidental war correspondent, might have written a cable about a far flung banana republic to The Daily Beast in London.
A lot of explaining the twist, vs people saying Keane hasn’t gone far enough. He must have got the balance just right…
Scoop is one of my favourites!
Yes, you are.
Yes Agnes you are missing the joke. And its a bloody bitingly funny one. I particularly enjoyed “The national government of Scott Morrison — who came to power in a 2018 putsch” so fitting!
An exquisite article. Such accuracy.
Yes, exquisite and accurate but misses a small but important point:
‘Morrison — who has the backing of media magnate Rupert Murdoch……..’
‘…….and the nation’s second news behemoth ‘Nine/SMH/Age’, a previously world-beating and now-shrivelled media organ overlorded by former Coalition Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir Peter Costello. Murdoch and Nine, while daily pillorying southern vizier Andrews for allowing viral escape from hotels, are still fact checking deeply probing exposes they plan to publish of Morrison’s persistent attempts to crush rebellious state government border closures, reportedly to facilitate viral escape into all other parts of Australia. It is speculated by NewsCorp that the federal government’s logic is that full-bore national escape will prove that we are indeed all in this together. There is no word yet on when the fact checking will be completed.
I agree Brian but it isn’t a small important point , don’t forget 7 west and Gina owning part of the Age.
Can anyone point out any mainstream media that isn’t part of the Neoliberal, well probably more accurately libertarian cartel that runs the country?
All our information is controlled by what is effectively election sponsors of whichever government is prepared to extricate the most money for them.
The exceptions are very careful elements that remain in the national broadcaster and a few small pockets of independent media.
Then there is social media which has plenty of vested interest churning out rubbish amongst fragments of important offerings.
This dilemma, years in the making is what has created our predicament, we don’t have a functioning 4th estate ,, we have a diversion orientated massive propaganda machine.
All true enough, as far as it goes, except that referring to something as the ‘biggest threat’ to Morrison’s grip on power ignores the bigger point that there is no credible threat to the power of the ruling nexus of corporate power, foreign right-wing media and their well-rewarded stooges in Parliament. If Morrison is sacrificed to take the heat off for a while, his place will be taken by someone much the same. Or worse. Labor is mostly irrelevant and hardly ever offers an alternative or any serious opposition to the fundamental assault on democratic government.
There are also omissions in the article, perhaps for lack of space, such as the steady erosion of fundamental pillars of the rule of law epitomised for now by the trials of Witness K and Bernard Collaery, and the creation of a hidden system of secret trials and imprisonment. By accident we learned of one such prisoner. We cannot know how many more are also held in secret, but we know the government’s system for making Australians disappear exists and is working.
Upvote for this comment. Dark, but frankly, very accurate.
Labor have had the stuffing kicked out of them since the resources tax fiasco.
Dark !?….I found it nicely bright n light n breazy ..a veritable puff of fresh air ,considering the truly real awful reality it is trying to come to grips with.. A nice piss take on how Australia is..
A good point, Mr. Rat. If Morrison was to go, who would replace him? I think, out of the current pack, Dutton would stand a good chance. We know he aspires to the role.
That would be a dark, dark day for the country, indeed.
The laundry list of political bastardry probably didn’t fit all on the post card.
You can bet that mick keelty won’t be one of those prosecuted.
Jon faine has written a funny article in today’s Age using similar royal titles.