An Aussie Whinge

Is it just me or are you also fed up to the back teeth with the unending avalanche of amnesia and tidal wave of incompetence afflicting our political class? If buck passing for the visually impaired was an Olympic sport, Australia’s political leaders would be standing as Team Australia on the top deck of the podium. A number of other countries would be jostling for the minor places.

Nobody, it seems, knew that allowing a shipload of passengers newly arrived from Covid-rich places beyond our shores to disembark in Sydney and fan out home would be a problem. And no one could quite remember who let them off or even who had the responsibility for making this call. To the south, an initially small, subsiding wave of infections in Victoria suddenly erupted into a full-blown second wave dwarfing the first. The cause was eventually traced back to the ramshackle policy (‘system’ is too misleading a term) of hotel quarantine in which untrained and unsupervised private security contractors were deployed to oversee (‘manage’ is too misleading a term) arrangements and keep the inmates from spreading the virus. The guards joined the inmates and helped the virus to break out into the community. Greater Melbourne was thrown into a stage four lockdown and the rest of the state suffered slightly milder restraints on their lives and livelihoods. The contact tracing system was soon overwhelmed, the hospitals and health workers put under mounting stress, and the virus racked up Victorian deaths in the hundreds, now accounting for 90 per cent of Australia’s death toll. The latter, though low by international standards, is still a tragic result in a country whose geographic isolation as an island (well two islands counting Tassie) should have provided a huge leg up in the fight against the pandemic. The contrast with the other two-island nation to our east is stark, both with respect to the morbidity and mortality outcomes and the effectiveness of the government response. I expect to see signs reading ‘I’m moving to New Zealand’ and ‘Where is Jacinda when you need her?’ popping up in the front yards of Melbourne residences as the lockdown grinds on.

As in the earlier cruise ship debacle in Sydney, Victoria’s crisis has been handballed to an inquiry that has yet to report but has provided a modicum of entertainment on the nightly television news as a tag team of state government ministers and bureaucrats are pictured racking their brains trying to recall anything of relevance since they sat down to last year’s Christmas lunch. ‘Sorry, I tried but just can’t recall. Is it Friday?’

Where is the federal government in all this? Well, as far away as possible. Apparently although the Australian Constitution grants the power of quarantine to the Feds, it was all the fault of the States. This line proved less than convincing as it became clear that the reaper was silently moving at speed through the nursing home sector infecting the elderly residents and the inadequately staffed and protected carers. The result has been a draconian separation of residents from their families, lonely deaths and a rushed effort to plug the gaps before total collapse of the system. Aged care is unambiguously a Federal government responsibility. And the system was already failing before Covid struck. A Royal Commission into the aged was up and running uncovering staggering cases of neglect, abuse and systemic under-performance in the nursing home sector dominated by private for-profit providers, as well as major government funding shortages and delays in home-based care.

Enough of Covid. The politicians’ excuse that ‘this is an unprecedented crisis that couldn’t have been foreseen’ is weak enough. It could have been – public health experts had been warning us for twenty years, as we complacently went about our normal lives, that this was coming down towards us like a Northern Territory road train with a dead driver slumped over the wheel. But even this fig leaf doesn’t cover the other avenues of incompetence and memory loss infecting other government failures. Before Covid grabbed attention a swathe of bushfires cut a devastating path through parts of Australia. A series of scandals involving federal government grants to marginal and winnable government electorates has followed a history of dodgy deals on outsourced contracts with private interests with close associations to the governing parties. The latest deal is so blatant as to be positively Trumpian. The government purchased land for a second runway at Sydney’s second airport, thirty years ahead of its planned development at ten times the original valuation from known donors to – yes, the governing parties, who then leased the land back for thirty years at its original value. Worth a close look, you say? Well the auditor-General thought so and produced a carefully worded but damning report. Who was responsible for the deal? It’s Friday, isn’t it?

The depressing accumulation of dodgy government deals goes well back in time, both at federal and state levels, under the blind eyes of both sides of government. But the incidence of both scandal and amnesia appears to be increasing like the upswing of ‘the curve’, that nifty graphic showing the progress of the Covid wave. Whereas, state governments have reluctantly instituted independent bodies to keep some sort of check on the wrongdoing of governments, both major parties at the federal level have steadfastly refused to create an independent commission against corruption that would hold parliamentarians and their minders as well as public servants to account. Whoever is in government seems to want to reserve the ability to act without integrity and to protect corrupt and incompetent members. They prefer to rely on the well-intentioned but poorly resourced offices of the Auditor-General and Ombudsman, whose reports can be quietly released at 6 pm on Friday afternoon and then ignored – or as our current Prime Minister says, ‘left in the Canberra bubble’.

Apart from having a whinge (and feeling a little better), these developments in Australian democracy will likely have long term consequences as we try to put our world back together after Covid. Rebooting the economy will require substantial government investment for most of this decade, including fixing another great mistake of the past, namely the less than cutting-edge rollout of the national broadband network. In the light of recent experiences and the absence of a strong cop on the beat, what guarantee do we the taxpayers have that these investments in the tens of billions will not entail substantial waste and corrupt dealing?

In the case of the completion of the NBN to support fibre to the home and business, there will be a strong temptation for a government focused on winding back its budget deficit to privatise the resulting network. Unless conditions are placed to prevent Telstra, the dominant communications player in Australia, from winning the tender, this will reprise Telstra’s historic role (in an earlier life) as a natural monopoly, albeit one now held in private hands. This augurs ill for future growth prospects, since regulating natural monopolies is a politically tricky business, especially as the government has an interest in maximising the sale proceeds by minimising restrictive conditions and oversight.

We’re not here by accident. Like many other countries our public sector has been unsystematically but effectively de-skilled as the public service has lost resources and independence, through budget cuts, political patronage in senior bureaucratic appointments and the creeping takeover by Ministerial minders of the development of policy. In the words of one extreme right wing American warrior, the aim has been to ‘shrink the government to a size that can be drowned in a bathtub’.

And the presidential debate! Could it possibly get any more bizarre? Yes, it could. Donald Trump and his Missus have caught the virus. The virus denier-in-chief is ill. You couldn’t script this stuff. Cry war and let loose the dogs of havoc – oh, they’re already out and about. As the president recuperates in the presidential suite at the military hospital, will he be reflecting on the wisdom of mask-wearing and social distancing? I don’t think so. From the debacle of the debate, all attention has pivoted to the question – what happens next. What if he can’t continue in the race? What if he can, wins and then can’t govern? Amendment 20 to the US Constitution says that in this case the Vice-President-Elect acts as President, as long as the VPE is still standing. What if Pence falls over? In that case it’s up to Congress who can appoint anyone of its choice to the acting role until the matter is resolved. Acting President Nancy Pelosi? Now that’s an interesting twist. She would be faced with the Michell Obama challenge; when they go low we go high. Would Pelosi act to give effect to the democratic will of the people or b e tempted to follow the Republicans’ ultra-partisan strategy and attempt to capture the White House for the Democrats. And every day another thousand Americans die.

Did I say I was sick of lockdown?

Vale RBG. On behalf of my daughters and granddaughters, thank you.