From a nation ablaze, to “I can’t breathe”, with floods, and a once-in-a-century pandemic in between. It has been the longest ever six months of the post-war era in Australia. Politics, and perhaps even “the two-party system”, have been suspended, or at least the circadian rhythms of sound-bites and school bus back-seat squabbling we have come to expect in the daily news cycle.
His eminence John Howard called it: “… there are no ideological constraints at this time”. Ideology has been (partly) forced into a back seat by facts, science, and the normally profoundly dull world of public service. In response to Covid-19, hundreds of billions of dollars in public welfare spending and stimulus have been splashed around by a Liberal National Party government that one short year ago, was proclaiming the nation “back in black” (next year). Left is right and down is up, and now we are officially in recession.
Public health bureaucrats such as Brendan Murphy, the Chief Medical Officer of Australia, and his slew of deputies have emerged from their subterranean offices to present Australia’s response to Covid-19 in an apolitical light. What’s more, federalism is back. The power and agency of the state and territory governments in their own jurisdictions has shone through, as Gladys Berejiklian and Daniel Andrews in particular have demonstrated through their determination not to have Canberra dictate the terms of the national response.
All of this, a little surprisingly, has worked out tickety-boo for Scott Morrison. Following his Hawaii holiday from hell around the start of the year, Newspoll records that Morrison’s “Better PM” numbers have leapt a dramatic 17 points between January and June, opening up a sizable lead over Anthony Albanese. Almost all of that leap materialised between the March and April polling, just as the Prime Minister announced its first dramatic crackdown (March 22nd) and a mass closure of pubs, clubs, places of worship and indoor sporting venues.
It’s a paradox; Australians have been trained to switch off when politicians open their mouths, they have a healthy scepticism and distrust of governments, most want to minimise the time and space that politics and political debate consume in their lives. Then a government comes along, and acting on public health advice, closes pubs, clubs, cafes and restaurants, kills organised sport dead, and tells them to stay home. That’s about all the sacred cows carved up. So what does Australia do? Australia does pretty much just what it is told, in droves. Our health response to Covid-19 looks set to be the envy of most of the world, and the Prime Minister, hoisted aloft on the shoulders of public health bureaucrats, channeling Sharks coach Shane Flanagan after the 2016 NRL grand final.
So just how well has Scott Morrison and his team actually performed during the crisis? It is difficult to argue with or to get past the numbers: clearly at aggregate level, Australia’s approach to date has been very successful in minimising the numbers of Covid-19 deaths and cases. This data visualiser from the Financial Times tells the stories of millions across the globe in that now ubiquitous line chart format. The egregious mistakes made in the UK and the US have been avoided here. Sure, the geography helps. But the efforts of Morrison and his team and the decisions that they have made have, overall, contributed net positively to helping Australia reduce the numbers of cases and deaths. In particular, the JobSeeker supplement and $130 billion JobKeeper package announced on March 22nd and March 30th respectively were bold steps by a government naturally disinclined to take such steps, and for that, the government deserves some plaudits.
That’s not to say there have not been serious missteps and highly questionable decisions:
- Communication chaos – in the early stages of the lockdown, the Prime Minister and indeed the National Cabinet struggled to communicate effectively and in a manner that was reassuring to people. Brendan Murphy was clearly not up to the immediate media relations ask of him. Convening National Cabinet meetings in the evening and late evening national press conferences (in which definitions and confusing lockdown conditions were tripped over in a GST cake like fashion) created a fearful muddle for the general public, as Katherine Murphy captured in the Guardian at the time:
Tuesday night’s cascading instructions from Scott Morrison’s podium were stay home everyone, but if you have a job, you are an essential worker, so make sure you keep working. Go to school, but don’t go to the foodcourt. Five at a wedding, 10 at a funeral, 10 at a bootcamp, but no yoga. No waxing, but a hairdresser for 30 minutes is still OK.
Furthermore, Scott Morrison and particularly Premiers Gladys Berejiklian and Daniel Andrews were rarely singing from the same song sheet, issuing quite different advice and suggestions about when lockdowns might happen and when they might be eased.
Little wonder the country ran out of toilet paper.
- Announcing SuperDrainer – allowing early access to superannuation further encourages draw-down of funds (and in this market, the crystallisation of share market losses) that are inherently meant to be used to help foster greater financial self-sufficiency and comfort in people’s old age.
- JobKeeper targeting flaws – the design of the JobKeeper package effectively excluded large swathes of workers from receiving support, particular artists and entertainment sector workers, casual and gig-economy workers, and those in the university sector. There is the sense that the ideology that the Morrison Government promised to throw out the window has been brought to bear on sectors housing some of its most vehement and effective critics.
- JobKeeper $60 billion error – fundamentally this is a departmental bungle in application form design and processing rather than anything that can be laid at the feet of the government, but $60 billion is a fair chunk of change to miscalculate
- HomeBuilder just plain sucks – the latest high profile Covid-19 support policy (a $25K grant for certain home build/renovation projects) and the least well designed of the lot, slain in 90 seconds by Andrew Leigh in parliament
- COVIDSafe vapourware? – the app was announced with great fanfare on April 26th but since then, the government has provided little details of its efficacy aside from the numbers of people who have downloaded it. Most likely this is because official data suggests the app has been ineffective and pointless to date.
- #BlackLivesMatter protest suppression – fear of the risks of spreading Covid-19 is a legitimate reason to not attend a mass protest. Nevertheless, a pandemic should not be used as a weapon to discourage political activism or freedom of expression; Morrison’s dictum to “stay home” is wilfully over-simplistic. Anthony Albanese has found himself at lockstep with the government and at loggerheads with some of his own team on this issue. A more nuanced position is needed.
This being 2020, some more twists in the tale will be coming soon. For Scott Morrison, however, Covid-19 has so far been successfully controlled locally, his Hawaii hijinks have been banished from the national consciousness and Newspoll indicates that 56% of Australians believe him a better Prime Minister than Anthony Albanese.
The truism that 2020 has been a shit year so far for all of us, so far, hasn’t applied to #ScottyFromMarketing.