Politics

This weekend, Australians are emerging from the lockdown that placed the country into quasi-hibernation for almost two months. The emergence of coronavirus has ignited an economic conflagration on a scale only comparable with the disruption caused by the Great Depression and World War II. How these health and economic crises now interact with one another as they play out will deeply change and affect the lives, health and prosperity of us all.

It’s been a long six weeks since Australia’s governments first imposed economy-crushing lockdowns to flatten the coronavirus curve. Scott Morrison has no doubt the pain has been worth it, saying ‘thousands of Australian lives have been saved’. Now he’s leading the charge to get back to business as soon as possible. He adds the qualification ‘safely possible’ but he is taking a huge gamble, risking a relapse that could only lead to a deeper recession.

Australia’s relationship with its biggest trading partner, China, has plunged to depths not seen since formal recognition of the Communist-governed state 48 years ago. The stakes for Canberra could not be higher, with business leaders and exporters privately furious at the government’s bumbling diplomatic performance over China and coronavirus.

As a long-term campaigner for disadvantaged students and the schools that overwhelmingly enrol them – public schools – I was gobsmacked this week by the sudden concern our federal government expressed for these students, and the risk they are getting left behind during the Covid-19 lockdown.

No matter how hard Prime Minister Scott Morrison and his senior ministers try to ignore Malcolm Turnbull’s explosive memoir, it simply will not go away. And for that, the deposed PM is far from apologetic. During a lunchbreak this week from the media blitz flogging A Bigger Picture, Turnbull told me he had written history and to do it truthfully you have to include faithfully recorded private conversations and communications.

Conflict doesn’t stop for a pandemic. In this way, Australia is a lucky country. We enjoy a relative peace. Beyond our shores though, there are communities that face the destructive dual perils of war and Covid-19. From Syria to South Sudan, Myanmar and Yemen, families who survived gunfire and shelling must now prepare to endure this invisible threat. But they shouldn’t have to do this alone – by its very nature, a pandemic demands a collective global response.

The ‘Great Lockdown’ – as the International Monetary Fund dubbed the coronavirus crisis this week – is plunging Australia and the world economy into the worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Just as that cataclysmic economic event seared itself into the psyches of those who lived through it, this episode is sure to do the same.

Earlier this year, I wrote that I feared the situation in China would become the reality across the rest of the world in March and April. That, unfortunately, is now what is unfolding before our very eyes. But if there is to be a third wave of this crisis, it will now be what happens in much of the developing world – including on Australia’s own doorstep.

The earth moved on Monday, when the coronavirus pandemic opened up a wide chasm between Australia’s governing Coalition and its political substructure. Don’t take my word for it, take the prime minister’s: ‘We are living in unprecedented times with the twin battles that we face and that we fight against the virus and against the economic ruin that it can threaten. This calls for unprecedented action.’ In one fell swoop the commitment to small government and privatisation, to the eradication of debt and deficit as the measure of fiscal rectitude and efficiency, tumbled into the abyss.

The coronavirus pandemic has shown that profound social change is possible. It has caused a dramatic transformation in the way major problems are addressed, not only by government, but also in the ways we live, work, travel, purchase, entertain ourselves and interact with others. Long-ignored questions have become suddenly vital.