Everyone is already suffering from cabin fever, so one wonders what it will be like when the Olympics are finished. I never intend to sit down and watch the Games for hours on end but they always get me in. There are probably thousands of people who have been similarly ambushed.
The COVID-19 lockdown is dominating the news cycle so comprehensively I could barely bring myself to watch Adam Harvey’s report on this week’s Four Corners, which tracked back over the whole sorry saga of mismanagement. There was probably little in the program we didn’t already know but it was devastating to see each stage of the debacle laid out so clearly.
Stephen Duckett of the Grattan Institute summed up the situation: “I think our vaccination strategy has been one of the worst in the world. What happened was we both delayed and we got it wrong.” He also noted Scummo’s attempts to get “every skerrick of publicity” from the meagre, inadequate measures the government has taken.
Indeed it’s this lust for good publicity that has caused so much of the confusion, with mixed messages, bad advice, and plain old lies. The government preferred to pretend the vaccination roll-out was going brilliantly when it was hardly going at all. The front-line health care workers, the staff in old peoples’ homes, disability centres, transport hubs, teachers, etc. are still waiting to be fully vaccinated, while Australia slipped to the bottom of the OECD ratings.
Kevin Rudd could hardly forebear gloating over his management of the GFC, and comparing it to the way Scummo has buggered up the pandemic response. Although Kev will always be a problematic character, he was spot on with this observation. Imagine if Scummo had been in charge during the GFC! There would have been breadlines in the streets. Now there are only long queues of people waiting for a jab.
Gladys is also doing her best to pretend she is a caring and sharing leader, but the craven, duplicitous, autocratic side keeps slipping out. At one of her press conferences this week, a reporter asked “Why is Bunnings still open?” Her reponse was: “Next question.”
Why indeed? Although Bunnings is Scummo’s favourite store this is hardly a good reason as to why it – and other places such as The Reject Shop – should be given special dispensation to remain open. In the past fortnight, 11 Bunnings stores have been listed as exposure sites. It continues Gladys’s policy of Lockdown Lite, which allows favoured businesses to keep operating while everyone else has to shut up and put up.
The only trouble with Lockdown Lite is that is doesn’t work. Case numbers are growing day by day, and the virus has now spread to the Hunter region. It’s becoming harder to see how this outbreak is ever going to be curtailed, as experts are saying that the Delta strain requires even higher vaccination rates than the previous strains. Instead of 75% start thinking 95%.
I’m becoming convinced the only way out will come when fully-vaccinated people are given a ‘passport’, probably for mobile phone, which allows them to live a relatively normal life. Those who decline to be vaccinated will be banned from restaurants, shops, sporting venues, etc. until they comply. In other words, you are free to refuse to be vaccinated, just don’t expect to inflict your choices on everyone else. This has got to be simpler – and less expensive – than Albo’s idea of paying everyone $300 to get the jab.
As for Gladys, one can only hope the ICAC investigation into the rorts she thinks are standard business practice is proceeding apace. Her associations with the previous boyfriend, Dagwood Maguire, and the new one, Arthur Moses QC, need to be scrutinised – not just for the front pages of the weeklies, but because of the conflicts of interest that have been festering in plain sight for months.
In lockdown mode I’m still writing essays for the Saturday column. The current one looks at Balzac’s famous short story, The Unknown Masterpiece, and its legacy in modern art. I’m enjoying the rather random nature of these pieces but each one could be two or three times as long, so any locquacious tendencies have to be reined in.
In the final week of the Olympics the film column has a sporting flavour, with a review of Naomi Osaka – a three-part Netflix documentary on the young tennis star known for her achievements on court and her mental issues in regard to press conferences. I sat down to watch this series with a good opinion of Osaka but came away feeling I’d watched an over-long portrait of a confused person. To be the subject of a 3-part doco at the age of 23 is really a bit ridiculous. It’s the most protracted piece of filmmaking since Peter Jackson got three movies out of The Hobbit – but that was more entertaining.