Despite the incessant hysteria of the political elite and their media lickspittles, the Chinese virus hasn’t proved exactly the plague apocalypse we’ve been told. The death toll in Australia remains far lower than even for recent bad flu seasons, and a mere fraction of the leading causes of death.
Yet, the virus has notched up one very big kill: the Australian spirit.
Australians were once renowned for their anti-authoritarian daring and rugged individualism. The Chinese virus has exposed many of us for what we really are: a nation of snivelling cowards, cowering at the boots of dictators, elected and unelected.
Has the country changed or are we seeing our true selves? Are our politicians reacting to the true instincts of a frightened and mollycoddled population or are they underestimating them? And if, please god, this is an aberration, how on earth do we return to our normal trajectory?
For decades, the real catch-cry of a large segment of Australia has been, not, “She’ll be right,” but “The gummint should do something!”
Well, now we’re seeing exactly what “the gummint doing somthing” looks like: ugly, brutal and authoritarian.
In South Australia this week, the state government started rounding up everyone who had attended a certain restaurant and winery, where there had been Covid infections, and dragooned them into hotel quarantine. Even people who had tested negative and were isolating at home were taken to the coronavirus gulag. This was in the free settler state, the “paradise of dissent”, and there was precious little dissent. What have we become?
The pervasiveness of the Mask Karens, Vaxholes and snitches flooding government hotlines is the depressing answer.
Turning up at your local supermarket these days your fellow citizens who once would have given you a flash of teeth, a nod or a robust “g’day” now peer at you suspiciously above their masks, making sure your mask is adequately positioned and that you do not threaten their personal space. They quickly avert their eyes, glancing to the Covid warden, the QR code poster or the ground[…]
The new shopping vibe is redolent of North Korea or East Germany before reunification, where I recall a palpable weight in the gazes falling upon you because your demeanour, gait or voice betrayed a carefree spirit that was foreign and threatening.
In this country we now snitch on each other. People call police to report a barbecue, a party or a liaison, they alert media to people who do not use QR codes, and they tell us to back off in coffee queues.
Politically, the only real gap between the Establishment left and right is how subservient they are to China. Domestically, Labor and Liberal premiers are all singing a stentorian chorus from the same manifesto: shut up and do what the Chief Medical Officer tells you.
Are we not supposed to be a resilient nation? A people characterised by self-reliance, egalitarianism and a healthy disrespect for authority?
We’ve traded resilience for snivelling terror in the face of the sort of virus that barely made the news in the late 60s (and certainly never stopped the generation now demanding complete protection from wallowing in the mud of music festivals). Self-reliance for complete dependence on the nanny state. The only egalitarianism we have is the egalitarianism of the prison.
As for authority: it’s obey, or be summarily hunted down by the goon squad. Even Facebook posts lead to the cops kicking down your door in front of your terrified family.
Robert Menzies’ lifters have been abandoned, and the leaners have taken over the show. Our national characteristics of resilience, self-reliance and anti-authoritarianism have been surrendered to an army of health bureaucrats, human resources professionals and risk managers who have seized their chance to impose a new nanny state Utopia.
I struggle for the words, and feel inept, so let me quote the great Les Murray on what we once had. “The ability to laugh at venerated things, and at awesome and deadly things, may, in time, prove to be one of Australia’s greatest gifts to mankind,” wrote the great poet. “It is, at bottom, a spiritual laughter, a mirth that puts tragedy, futility and vanity alike in their place.” I recognise the people, character and qualities that Murray eloquently describes. I fear this virus has killed them.
The Australian
Not the virus: the virus has killed far fewer Australians than a bad influenza season, let alone heart disease or dementia.
What’s killed the spirit of Australia are the troughers and tyrants: they’ve seized their moment and we’ve sat back and, not just watched in dumb acquiescence, but cheered them on.
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