While far from universal, the left-right divide in dealing with the pandemic has remained stark.
The Murdoch-Trumpian right — and, surprisingly, social-democratic Sweden — took a libertarian approach. The left, as Guy Rundle observed last week, swung behind the state and ended up adopting authoritarian methods of dealing with the virus, as pioneered by China at the start of the lockdown.
Both sides continue to claim a moral victory, but this article isn’t discussing which approach was correct. Rather, it’s to explore the readiness of many to so quickly dispense with long-held beliefs in the pursuit of a lower virus toll.
Something that has gone underappreciated since the beginning of the pandemic is the impact of border closures on the resettlement of refugees in Australia. In 2017, Australia accepted more than 24,000 refugees. That number dropped to 13,000 in 2019-20 after the Department of Home Affairs suspended the granting “of all offshore humanitarian visas … as a result of Covid-19 travel restrictions”. There’s a good chance that few, if any, refugees have arrived in Australia since then.
Refugees by definition have a well-founded fear of persecution if they remain in or return to their home country. One wonders how many Australians indignantly criticised the federal government’s heartless approach to the Biloela family, while simultaneously championing a border policy that prevents thousands of other families just like the Murugappans from building a new life in Australia.
Perhaps coincidentally, the number of refugees we’ve prevented from arriving is very similar to the number of elderly people who would have died with COVID without border closures and lockdowns. Rightly or wrongly, we have chosen to prioritise nursing home residents over people fleeing Sri Lanka and Afghanistan — possibly not surprising given our prime minister built his career on stopping the boats.
Then there’s wealth inequality, which has blossomed under inflationary government interventions around the world. JobKeeper, a policy notionally intended to protect low paid workers, ended up lining the pockets of Australian billionaires. Forbes reported that the average Australian billionaire grew their wealth by 59% last year, and Oxfam found that while the world’s richest recovered from the pandemic in months, it could take a decade for the world’s poorest to return to pre-pandemic levels.
In basic terms, when a government forcibly shuts a society, then prints lots of money to prevent its economic collapse, that ends up being really good for rich people (who own assets like houses and shares that massively increase in price) and really bad for everyone else.
Let’s not forget about the children, whose futures have been willingly sacrificed in the name of the COVID fight. The World Bank estimated that the pandemic could push 72 million children into “learning poverty”. The learning deficit is far from evenly distributed: a study in The Lancet found that “while learning might continue unimpeded for children from higher income households, children from lower income households are likely to struggle to complete homework and online courses because of their precarious housing situations”.
The study also noted that school closures exacerbate food insecurity issues, with many children relying on schools to provide a healthy (or in some cases, any) diet.
Lockdowns have the additional unfortunate effect on domestic violence victims. A BBC investigation found that “two-thirds of women in abusive relationships have suffered more violence from their partners during the pandemic … [while] three-quarters of victims also say the lockdown has made it harder for them to escape their abusers”.
Even if you willingly accept the obvious (but not necessarily correct) conclusion that lockdowns and border closures save many lives, that turns a blind eye to many issues that those on the humanitarian left once believed were important — like the wellbeing of refugees, children’s education, domestic violence and income inequality.
There is no easy answer to how to handle a pandemic. Do nothing and some people will inevitably be killed by the silent pathogen. Do something drastic, like closing borders and businesses and schools, and it can be easy to overcorrect.
The lustre of government control may shine bright, but for many who once championed human rights and freedoms, the devil is in the detail.
Adam Schwab is a Crikey and SmartCompany columnist, author of Pigs at the Trough: Lessons from Australia’s Decade of Corporate Greed, and the founder of LuxuryEscapes.com. He is a director of Private Media, the publisher of Crikey.
No, because we can walk and chew gum at the same time.
One wonders why you haven’t noticed how many of those campaigning for the Biloela family have been advocating for all refugees in Australia’s gulags.
That wasn’t inevitable, as plenty of commenters here have pointed out. Your beloved Liberal Party loves limiting the amount of money to poor people and what they can do with it. They could have done the same to the rich, but you’re only too willing to turn–in your words below–a “blind eye” to the rampant corruption inherent in the granting of JobKeeper to private schools and parasitical LNP-donor retailers.
Plenty of people are still highlighting those issues, but you couldn’t be bothered looking.
What an utterly worthless series of straw men.
The left is not ignoring this that’s for sure; and it’s all to do with what you’re ranting about
The NSW Public Accountability Committee has reconvened its inquiry into the Berejiklian’s government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic response.
And it should be noted that this committee has teeth, as it’s the same body that recently blew the lid on multiple pork barrelling scandals involving the NSW Liberal Nationals government.
Committee chair NSW Greens MLC David Shoebridge has outlined the inquiry will be probing into the chauffeur arrangements for international pilots that led to the outbreak, quarantine management, hesitation to lockdown and disparities in approaches between east and west Sydney.
Committee chair NSW Greens MLC David Shoebridge said:
”This inquiry is necessary to have accountability of government during a crisis. We still don’t know the various factors the government took into account, when Greater Sydney moved very slowly into a lockdown in mid-June.
By the time the citywide lockdown was announced, there were already COVID fragments being discovered in some dozen sewage treatment plants right across the Greater Sydney region.
It’s essential that we understand what factors other than public health advice were relied upon to decide when and how hard to go with the lockdown.
In that context, it’s important to remember the state budget was in the middle of that first seven day period.
It seems incredible that one of the most critical risks in a pandemic – in this case, the transportation of international flight crew – was handed out to a privatised firm with literally no public health oversight.
We need to understand how that happened and ensure that measures are being put in place so that kind of mistake is not repeated.
When you privatise and contract out critical public health functions in a pandemic, of course, that’s going to invite scrutiny and that’s what we are going to give it.
You can’t look at the public health response without understanding how unevenly and how unfairly pandemic and lockdown measures impact the community.
We have already seen how the same circumstances can cause significantly more disruption in southwest Sydney than they do in more affluent parts of the city, such as the east and the Northern Suburbs.
We all want people to comply with public health orders – to stay home and to stay safe – but, for that to happen, people need to have the economic security and the supports in place for them to safely do that.
At the moment, those arrangements are so patchy that they push against the public health messaging.
There are clearly competing lines of thought within the Berejiklian cabinet about how to respond to the lockdown.
There are voices in her team who are calling for the near complete removal of the lockdown and to let the pandemic explode.
There are other influencing voices who are clearly representing specific industries that have traditionally been very powerful, such as the construction sector.
We need to ensure that the decision-making is primarily guided by public health advice and public health measures that keep all of us safe.
We don’t want to just respond to one or two well-funded or well-connected industries or, worse still, to some of the anti-science conspirators who are within the Coalition government ranks.”
More of of Schwab’s false concern about human lives.
What does a search about “Adam Schwab Human Rights” or “Adam Schwab Refugees” return in google search, generously from 1/1/2000 to 1/11/2019 (just before Covid pandemic)?
Somebody let me know if they find anything that shows Adam Schwab with a positive and supportive position on any of these issues.
Otherwise, nothing other than self interest is the driving concern behind Schwab’s Covid articles.
Conflicted bilge like this is partly why I’ve cancelled my subscription – there are plenty of other journals contributing far more insightful pieces than this, which is nothing more than an ill-informed opinion piece. All he is doing is making some assumptions so that he can construct something in order to propagate his own particular ideology – not the slightest insight. Further, Crikey couldn’t be bothered reigning him in – it’s my view that they are just as feckless as those they claim to rail against.
Nice try, but it’s a bit hard to advocate for human rights for a corpse. The most important thing that can get us out of this mess is international cooperation to ensure everyone on this planet has a chance at vaccination. So long as we fall short of that, lockdowns will continue.
Aside from a reference to the Lancet, this reads like something that was printed in the herald sun or equivalent months ago. I would hope the left, at least those subscribing to Crikey, are well aware of these seeming hypocrisies. I think it’s great that Crikey includes some more conservative think pieces, but keep the standard up. Adam’s a smart guy no doubt, but these articles read like something he wrote in-between meetings. OR perhaps ALL the think pieces on Crikey are of this standard and I’m so hopelessly biased that I needed this to wake me up from a leftist-stupor, to realise that in fact, I’ve been duped all along? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
That’s pretty much my take on it. I would like my assumptions to be challenged and often wish Crikey published a few more well-written but contrary views. But these drunken Uncle opinion pieces are meaningless & obviously only published due to his position. I’d dislike them even if they 100% matched my worldview. Worse still as subscribers we’re presumably paying for them.
But these drunken Uncle opinion pieces are meaningless & obviously only published due to his position.
Marvellous, hic hic, burb.
Oh come on Adam give it a rest.
Yes it would be nice if we could all take a luxury escape and you could make some money but I think the nation has collectively decided the approach that we’ll take so until we get more jabs in arms we’re stuck.