Comment

Death and the plague. Whenever Gadfly reaches for his well-thumbed Pears’ Cyclopaedia he finds that plagues turn out worse than everyone had hoped. What does this pattern of history mean in regard to Schmo’s “snapback” or the impressive “V-shaped recovery”? All the economic pundits Gadfly can discover say the PM’s smoking something.

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.

The response was clear and immediate. Within minutes of launching the National Museum of Australia’s project to record our collective experiences of the coronavirus, scores of people across the country joined in to share how they were coping with the crisis. ‘I’ve been waiting for something like this to start,’ one woman wrote in our Facebook group that first day.

Lord Moloch’s press is leaving no stone unturned in letting a couple of confirmed Trumble detractors give a vigorous “welcome” to the former PM’s book A Bigger Picture. Last Thursday, The Daily Smellograph treated us to an analysis by Peter King, a former member for Wentworth, trounced by Trumble in a bitter preselection in 2003, amid accusations of branch stacking and branch stripping.

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.

The High Court, exhausted after its unanimous feat in the Pell appeal, broke into clusters to come up with its thinking on The Sunday Telegraph’s challenge to Constable Plod’s warrant to search and seize data and documents from journalist Annika Smethurst’s home. After all, Smethurst was the reporter who brought us news of plans being hatched to extend the powers of the Australian Signals Directorate to covertly access data about the life and movements of Australian citizens – a story that was fair and square in the public interest.

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.

In the wake of Covid-19, mental health experts are warning the trauma caused by the lockdown, employment loss and anxiety associated with the pandemic could be far higher than the physical health impacts of the virus itself, with younger people particularly vulnerable.

Where’s Siiiiimon Reynolds when you need him? You’ll remember Siiiiimon as the adman who created the Grim Reaper advertisement in 1987, during the AIDS epidemic. It was a controversial yet highly effective message that drove home HIV awareness. Today the message about coronavirus could be coming into people’s mobile phones, daily, three times a day, whatever it takes.