Extract from The Guardian
Last modified on Sun 12 Sep 2021 06.01 AEST
As F Scott Fitzgerald once wrote to his daughter: “Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.” So it is with many politicians.
At what point in the midst of a pandemic would anyone other than a politician think a good way to highlight the benefits of opening up is by saying, as did Scott Morrison last week, “they’ll have funerals, but people will be able to attend them”. I mean, even throwing in the “sadly” beforehand is a truly weird way to highlight hope.
How do you get to a point where you stand up in front of reporters, as did Gladys Berejiklian, and state that “death is horrible, but we also need to put things into perspective, because at the moment there are 8 million citizens who don’t have choice in how they spend their free time”.
But should we be surprised, given the day New South Wales announced a record number of cases and at the point where the state government is seeking to trial a pathway towards easing restrictions, Berejiklian also announced that she and the health minister would no longer be holding daily press conferences because it was not “practical”?
As I say, politicians are different from you and me.
Now look, we get it.
This week the latest payroll jobs numbers showed that NSW has lost nearly 9% of all jobs in the past two months. And bad as that is, they really hide the true hit to employment, because when we drill down, we find that northern parts ofSydney have lost nearly 10% of jobs, while the south-west has lost close to 15%.
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A roadmap out of the current lockdown hell is vital for the economy and our mental health.
But when you hear Morrison suggest, as he did on Thursday, that Western Australia “get vaccinated and get ready – get your hospital system ready, get your health system ready, and push through”, you really have to ask what is the priority here?
When we hear them talk about pushing through and needing to have some perspective, we might decide that our perspectives and viewpoints are not the same
Push through? Push through rising hospitalisations? That’s the sales pitch?
Yes, jobs are important, and as someone who works in the tertiary sector, I am more than aware of the job losses occurring because of pandemic restrictions.
But as someone whose 15-year-old daughter is in a high-risk category and has only this week been able to have her first vaccine, I’m also aware of the fear many have about easing restrictions.
So yes, we need to put a lot of things into perspective.
But just after telling Western Australia to push through, the prime minister explained why Australia negotiated to remove specific climate targets from the free trade agreement with the UK by saying that “it wasn’t a climate agreement; it was a trade agreement”.
Well now, either Morrisons had just revealed his ignorance of how important climate targets will be to trade in the future when carbon tariffs become a thing, or he had revealed his willingness to do anything to prevent emissions reduction.
It seems like political worries about the National party are more of an issue to him than the climate.
When we keep getting told that Australia will “meet and beat” its emissions targets despite all evidence to the contrary, why should we believe their statements about the validity of their targets and policy for handling Covid?
Yes, governments need to chart a path towards easing restrictions and we should expect they have put great thought into the consequences.
But when we have had so much evidence of mismanagement and irresponsible handling of the ongoing crisis of climate change, it is not a great surprise that when we hear them talk about pushing through and needing to have some perspective, we might decide that our perspectives and viewpoints are not the same.
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