WINNING ESSAY: History will Judge the People before the Politics

Essay by Samuel Chamberlain for the Tim Andrews Essay Prize

A paradox exists in the average Australian’s mind. On the one hand, poll after poll shows an ever decreasing trust in our government and media institutions. On the other hand, however, any reasonable suggestion that health measures throughout the pandemic had gone too far were met with the rebuke of ‘conspiracy theory’. This paradox reflects nearly every defect in Australia’s pandemic response. 

When history looks back to judge Australia’s handling of the pandemic, only the historical professionals will observe the particulars of vaccine rollouts and hotel quarantine arrangements. What will remain pertinent to everyone, however, is just how prevalent cognitive dissonance was among the public at every decision stage. How the public could both distrust our institutions but then trust every health policy promise they made. How the public could look forward with anticipation for every roadmap out of lockdown despite most past roadmaps being reneged upon. How the public could show unabated support for their State Leader despite many a promise of a snap lockdown forming into a many month long lockdown. 

Poor policy will of course be judged, but so will the people that put up with it for so long. One understanding that will remain for a long time, and that is already recognised by foreigners, is that Australians are no longer the larrikins they once thought they were. It must be said for what it is: this pandemic has shown the average Australian to be obedient, unquestioning and unwilling to oppose those in charge to any great extent. This realisation will be central to any future judgement of Australia’s Covid response. 

Take vaccine passports (domestic passports) which are a digital infrastructure that connect one’s rights of association and movement to a centralised government account. To even believe in 2020 that vaccine passports could be a possibility would leave yourself open to be labelled a conspiracy theorist. Now that such a passport exists in 2021, to oppose the introduction of a “paper’s please” society you could be characterised as opposed to people’s health. Very few Australians when prompted to remember that in 2020 vaccines passports were derided as silly nonsense ideas will acknowledge the slippery slope that has occurred. Instead, they will parrot a government line about it ‘being for our safety’. Few other government policies outside of vaccine passports show to such a great extent the Australian public’s apathy to current and likely future dangers towards their freedom. 

In fact, the average Australian has shown little foresight for how anything – legislation, mandates, regulation - could ever go wrong or mutate into something far worse. Practically every law that has ever given the government a greater ability to take, monitor, and utilise your private data over the past two years is yet to see an ounce of protest from middle-of-the-road Australia. Take the very recent Victorian Emergency Powers Bill which delivers the Premier unprecedented powers to institute three month state of emergency periods with practically no oversight. Only a very small portion of Australians will ever register the existence of such a Bill, let alone oppose it. 

Perhaps what best showcases the average Australian’s ability to hold two contradictory thoughts in their head throughout this pandemic has been their willingness to forgive obvious contradictions from our Premiers and State Health establishments. Queensland went in the space of two weeks from thinking masks were a superfluous redundancy to something that must be worn in the car even if you were by yourself. Despite completely contradictory information coming from the Federal and State health authorities on matters of school and border closures, citizens still took the state health dictates as unquestionable gospel. The Queensland Premier in late 2021 tried to frustrate the national re-opening plan by becoming the embodiment of Maud Flanders from the Simpsons (“think of the children”) after trying to suggest that opening up to Covid would pose an unacceptable risk to children under twelve. This was immediately rubbished. Contradictions between health authorities are clear signs that much of what is mandated is guesswork, but this was overlooked by the Australians who thought the stringent restrictions on their freedoms were guaranteed to keep them safe. 

Contradiction after contradiction - between State and Federal Governments, between Australia and the international experience, and within our own state health bureaucracies - was waved away by Australians. The most important and pertinent restrictions ever imposed upon Australian citizens were met with the least scepticism. I’ve met people who treat a local member’s promise to improve parking at the bus station as worthless lies and empty promises. But when economy-closing and job-ending lockdowns occur they are accepted by the same archetypal median-voter type without question. 

There seems to be an inverse relationship between the severity of a government’s decision and the scepticism with which it is met by the public. 

The best place to look for answering how Australia’s Covid response will be judged by history is by looking to the commentary of those nations already past this pandemic. By this, I mean those nations that are done with lockdowns, who have abolished the use of vaccine passports, where life is just literally back to the ‘old’ normal. From the viewpoint of such a country looking at the situation of Australia, it would be like looking at a nation who is still stuck in the past. By looking at the commentary of these nations – essentially most nations are more liberal in relation to Australia’s current Covid Policies - we should be able to get a good idea of how our response will be seen in the eyes of history. 

The international criticism on Australia is painstaking. A popular t-shirt slogan in the United States is “Don’t Australia my America.” Polish MP’s condemned Australia as totalitarian and called for negotiations to expatriate Polish dual-citizens from Victoria. We are regularly commented upon in European media for having such harsh lockdowns for such low cases numbers. Frankly, we’re seen as incapable of balancing risk, incapable of respecting basic liberties even in the context of a pandemic and we’re seen as frauds when we claim to be laid-back, authority-hating larrikins. We are seen now as an obedient people who have taken cradle to grave security to a whole new level. 

History will judge the people before they do the politics. There will be a litany of policy failures, contradictions, and deceits for sure, but the question that will naturally become most pertinent will be: why did the Australian people put up with such nonsense for over 18 months? Barely even a whimper of protest from the average Aussie. The greatest setback for our nation will be, however, if we emerge from this pandemic still thinking that you can comply your way to greater freedoms.