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Written by Dr. Binoy Kampmark
It’s the last week of an election between the uninspiring and the unspeakable. Australia’s conservative incumbents – the unspeakable ones – are even desperate enough to concede to a lack of popularity. Dislike us, but for heaven’s sake, vote us in. The times are wretched, the cost of living is rising, and we are going to look after you in the spiral. The opposition, in contrast, is being stingy on detail and sparing on scope. Memories of 2019 continue to traumatise the Australian Labor Party.
Scouring the election platforms, statements, and town hall debates, is a glaring absence of one particular field of policy. Virtually no candidate or major political party is mentioning that troubling issue of COVID-19 and the global pandemic. That was the dark past, and, like released jailbirds, voters find themselves preoccupied with other matters.
Sporadically, mention is made about the Morrison government’s tardy ordering and supply of COVID-19 vaccines – at least in the initial phase. At that time, Prime Minister Scott Morrison, rather infamously, dismissed the slow rollout. This wasn’t, he opined, a race.
In his first campaign video, Morrison burnished his own credentials as a warrior against COVID-19, having been responsible for saving thousands of lives. (The States and Territories, all far more engaged in the matter than Morrison ever was, are ignored.) But the primary message was that of, “A choice between an economic recovery that is leading the world, and a Labor opposition that would weaken it, and risk it.”
Despite Australia’s enviable record, the emergence of the furiously transmissible Omicron variant and a death toll this year surpassing the combined figures of 2020 and 2021, have seen a departure from previous policy. As Raina MacIntyre of the Kirby Institute remarked in January, Australia “swung from one extreme in pandemic control to the other – having great control of COVID, to now having the world’s highest rise in daily cases.”
Scenes of chaos ensued. The vulnerable had to queue for hours as testing centres were overwhelmed. A number of such centres were also closed, often without good reason. The Commonwealth and State governments tinkered with definitions on eligibility regarding testing, all the time refusing to expand capacity. MacIntyre was distinctly unimpressed. “There was no planning for expedited third-dose boosters, expanded testing capacity, rapid antigen tests, hospital in the home, opening of schools or even guidance for people to protect their household when one person becomes infected.”
None of this has made a difference in the political platform, nor, it seems, in voter interest. The COVID brain fade has well and truly set in. According to data generated by the ABC’s Vote Compass, a mere 1 per cent of Australians consider COVID the most important issue in this election. Vulnerable members of society are being seen as “collateral” to the overall scheme. Living with the virus has also meant suffering and even perishing from it.
The only party making much of COVID-19, and not from the perspective of praising vaccines and sound pandemic management, is the United Australia Party. Bankrolled by the quixotic mining magnate Clive Palmer, millions have been spent on media campaigns that have seen no discernible shift in the polls.
By default, health officials and experts have become crying Cassandras and the concerned oracles. Virologist Stuart Turville has observed, with exasperation, that the federal election campaign has been afflicted by “a case of COVID Fight Club. Don’t talk about it.” Future policies on the subject are virtually absent. “What will happen if we don’t get our third or fourth dose?” wonders Turville. “Will we see the death rate creep up from 40, to 60, to 80 before we start to talk about this again?”
Another figure of some woe and worry is Burnet Institute director, Brendan Crabb, who claims that politicians and governments have resolutely kept their “heads in the sand”. There was a dangerous sense of “COVID now”. Continuing high rates of transmission was “bad for business”. The longer health impacts were also being neglected. “How many of the 350,000 plus active cases in Australia right now will have chronic impacts? Overseas data suggests 20 per cent of them.”
Epidemiologist Nancy Baxter, based at the University of Melbourne, is another who can always be relied upon to deter any emerging complacency. “We’re at a point,” she gravely states, “where COVID is now one of the major killers of Australians, and probably by the end of the year is going to be one of the top three.” She adds further lashings of doom. “And with increasing case numbers, new sub-variants [will be] coming in. This may drive it even further, which would have a bigger impact.”
If the current mood prevails till May 21, we can expect little purchase from such attitudes at the ballot box. Fiscal responsibility, the consumer price index, climate change and the China bogeyman, are likely to feature ahead of the most disruptive pandemic in a century.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com
What a load of crap. People are dying WITH COVID, not FROM COVID. Worth mentioning, no cases of flu were recorded last year, even though Australia has approx 200,000 cases per year, before COVID. Approx. 1,500 people die fro flu each year. Conviniently, for fearmongering purposes, flu was placed in the same basket as COVID. Also worth mentioning, close to 1,200 have died as a direct result from vaccines side effect. Kids as young as 12 were suffering from myocarditis as a direct result of these experimental vaccines. Meanwhile, COVID has turned out to be a mild flu.
The ‘covid’ was the Flu. It was another pump and dump by shysters who wanted to be given fortunes of public money. The first volley, IMO, was the Flu shot, which was tainted to cause ‘covid’ symptoms and kick of the hysteria and support the propaganda.
People are dying who have been given fraudulent tests for covid which came out as positive. Does the jab cause cancer?
Who wrote this crap? Clearly not up to date on Covid reality! Its a non issue for health and those who have died with it tend to be older than your average life expectancy! If under that they have two to three other co morbidity issues. We will not bother with the BS injections, that are not vaccines. Its a cold at best and if the Australian public is too fucking dumb to remember how they were treated and to kick the tyrants out of office they get what they deserve! Australia is simply screwed, tyrant douche bag lap dog of the US or wokeist twat lap dog of the US. The only thing Australians can be happy about is they are not Canada!
and low vitamin D levels.
It’s a, blatant media, set up to put Catholic Albanese in.
Not vaccinated never tested and no regrets, I personally now more people forced to take the vaccine that had bad side effects, clots strokes amputations than anyone that the flu. Give back people’s freedom of choice.
Power is never given back. Patriot Act is a glaring example.
This article is utter bullshit. COvID, if it exists, is a mild flu. The real killer has been the so-called vaccine, which has raised the death-rate to unprecedented highs.
If you believe in the ‘covid’, you’re already a victim. of gov’t malfeasance, corruption, and treason.
I’ll leave it up to you to know whats going on,sourced from ukraine via soros volunteers,then to spain,europe usa,even delivered to Australia,and we are supposed to fall for the nwo/mi6/cia covid scam again? Forget it dud!
All lives matters even if it is only a few. Thats why all lives on this planet must suffer. To save these few lives. Under WWII 60 million people died because they tried to save the 6 million.