The PM seeks to win an election at the expense of national unity
A disingenuous and fragmented national stewardship over an incongruous national message is taking its toll over an emotionally exhausted and spin-fatigued Australian population.
At times it has felt that perceptions couldn’t be any further apart, across the great expanses of desert and tinder between the Indian and Pacific oceans. The gauges have never looked so misaligned between the “premier state” and the rest of the nation. In the density of information, something has been misplaced in the boroughs of Sydney, spreading out in ripples across Australia. Media messaging and federal government support has changed the way the situation is read in NSW compared to the experiences across this remainder of this enormous and decentralised land.
Many of the traditional political barometers of the country have historically been located in NSW. In this crisis, the Berejiklian government, most of the national media, the Prime Minister, and anyone else in the thin and concentrated band of wealth that drapes the coves and capes of the historical Sydney harbour and coastline, have been out of touch with a large share of Australians in this pandemic. This has been seen in the recent tensions in the National Cabinet and the visible polarisation between the states and the federal government around the national response.
NSW was always going to be the beacon of lily-white hope for the LNP and the corporate class looking to walk another path, with out-of-kilter contact tracing and out-of-sync Doherty modelling. These elements seem to be driven by a mechanical optimism, the morbid inevitability of an endemic virus and a seemingly fatal obligation to get the Westfields open again. This could have been acceptable messaging back in 2020, as it avoided a crisis like Victoria and other parts of the country, but this wasn’t the case in the three weeks of paralysis before Berejiklian reluctantly and belatedly called the lockdown under the Delta variant.
Our Australian pandemic story has not had the depth, understanding and nuance when told by a majority of journalists who work at the media and television headquarters dotted around the exclusive city, amongst the corporate giants who nestle in their own private coves. We should take stock in the disparity of perception, thought and action between the states, their populations and governments, and the way individual responses reflect these factors, amongst the backdrop of perception, wielded with selectivity by the Federal government and broadcast by the corporate media giants.
A national message broadcast through Sydney optics - it felt incompatible with that of Western Australia, let alone Wilcannia, maybe even Western Sydney too. With extents of NSW closer to Adelaide than Sydney, it was no wonder that the tragedy of Wilcannia reflected an isolation, and a disconnect between the double jabbed Pfizers getting exercise on the beach at Coogee, and the 10% of an entire town languishing in ultra-high density dwellings, told to get Uber eats as their governments whispered “doses of hope” and talked tough on 70-80%.
How can the NSW Health minister call people “selfish”, when his Wakehurst-based short sightedness neglected one of the most remote and at risk communities in his state? This demonstrates the folly of a poorly conceived health response that relies on the bare minimum – a poorly planned vaccine supply chain and the hubris to think the gold standard was going to work out in the Central Darling Shire. Long neglected out in the west, the crowded and historical housing crisis in places like Wilcannia, continues to be a national embarrassment and under covid a national emergency.
To augment the failures of a slow vaccine rollout across the nation, the government wedges and tramples on nice old things, twisting the uncodified conventions and the remnants of good will embedded in our precious democracy, all to get its rusty jalopy over the line next election. In the face of an overarching truth, the failures of this government to act on offers by Pfizer CEO to supply “millions of vaccines” render all of these disturbances unnecessary.
How can Morrison focus on state obfuscation as the impediment on the “ROADMAP TO FREEDOM”, when it clearly evident the LNP government has failed to supply the key ingredient for this target? A goal, which by the way, looks like 70% in NSW and 90% in Tasmania, a couple of Liberal states, and then there is everyone else. The “sprint” and the “egg-and-spoon race” are now well and truly on. The guy who said “it isn’t a race” is making it hard to give everyone a ribbon for participation, because he hasn’t clearly defined the finish line and he is choosing to favour his handicapped prospect in NSW.
The sprint in NSW has been made possible by the depletion of supplies to other states, diverting vaccine supply to the epicentre of the pandemic by a National Cabinet that is showing increasing signs of strain and duress. Laura Tingle speaks to the allocations of Pfizer diverted to NSW leapfrogging them into the position to achieve these targets first, and highlighting the uneasiness of the situation felt by other states. NSW having benefited from the agreement of other states to reroute vaccines, is also the state holding the support of the federal government, the corporate press, and most of the business community – and now they look to leave the other states behind. It’s devastating that the federal government has allowed this to happen.
In Victoria, deep into its 6th lockdown, there has been anger. The Palaszczuk government, tired after months of sabre rattling about borders, often reflects the frustrations of Queenslanders. WA’s McGowan, literally drinking beers in the pub and about to host an AFL Grand Final, fresh from parrying a million dollar, tax-payer and government backed Palmer border incursion, was beyond making subtle points. In SA and Tasmania it was clear that Liberal state governments were listening to their voters. Compounding matters, as the Prime Minister tries to pack this all into a Pandora’s box before election time, in the delay and chaos, there are some on the LNP fringe that don’t support any of it, spreading daily misinformation and dulling the hope of us reaching these translucent targets. Talk about obfuscation!
When our PM went under cover of night and recycled photography to his “home” in Sydney for fathers day, most of us were in no doubt about where his home was, and that’s not completely what made it hurt. We all know someone who can’t get an exemption to see their mum or dad. If it wasn’t the guy who shot through to Hawaii in a firestorm, the man that watched a transmogrifying Barnaby take charge of the house on zoom call, the leader who went to a Sharkies game in Victoria’s darkest pandemic hour, or the man who hosted 6 out of 55 recommendations at the Women’s Safety Summit with Kochie, it might have been ok.
Throughout this pandemic, whenever the natural weeping state of a rational-society-crying-for-a-rational-response kicks in, this federal government has shown time and again it will not heed this reasonable and organic call, and they can’t be trusted in arrangements made in that same spirit. Even worse, they are willing to hide behind an incompetent NSW government embroiled in the middle of its own internal corruption crisis.
Australia has a history of responding as a nation to crisis. Henry Lawson travelled far and wide outside his cove to experience it, C.E.W. Bean tried to find it on the battlefields, Mabo tried to show us that our story could be told together. Every now and then the odd Prime Minister has a crack at drawing on national unity, but not this PM. Scott Morrison is too busy destroying the finite and precious concept of rationalism, in a crisis, all for a single election victory built on climate denial, driven by Kelly, Christensen, Barnaby and Canavan, conveyed by charlatans like Frydenbreg, Porter, Dutton and Hunt and normalized by the party faithful fiddling away in their Sydney coves and Canberra spaceships, while the whole place gets ready for another bushfire season. At this moment, in this country, there is a common story to be told. It is a shame, and maybe a crime, that the leaders of today do not wish to voice it at this crucial moment in our history.
Excellent piece; thank you.
Thanks Joel for the article. Get ready for a Khaki election with the yellow peril coming to take over, as usual Corporate media and ABC will be falling over themselves to shove down our throats. How depressing that there is enough of the voting public will be sucked in. Cheers, Spiros.