Leaders stoke fear and uncertainty

As fireworks fizzed and popped over Sydney Harbour on Australia Day 2020, few could have imagined the unprecedented strain about to be visited by our leaders upon the ‘Lucky Country’.

For a health crisis  — precipitated by infection from a hitherto unknown virus — coupled with an economic crisis, has now morphed into a political crisis posing no lesser threat to the nation.

Far from uniting communities and fostering a sense of common purpose, state and territory leaders have instead stoked fear and uncertainty, thereby threatening the national identity of the country.

No wonder that frustration with efforts by state governments to manage covid-19 has boiled over into angry demonstrations around the country in recent weeks — most notably in Melbourne.

While NSW has managed return to a semblance of normal life, with the state government looking to expand Sydney night-life in a bid to boost the local economy, other states remain locked up.

Secessionist thinking in Western Australia remains popular (in WA) and is now resurgent as premier Mark McGowan remains committed to checking the spread of contagion from ‘the eastern states’.

And so determined is Queensland Premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, to prioritize the well-being of Queenslanders over ‘outsiders’, that she has put her job on the line by clamping shut state borders.

But Victorian Premier, Daniel Andrews, has provoked the fiercest ire with a draconian lockdown and night-time curfew to erase covid-19 — enforced by the heavy-handed tactics of riot gear-clad police.

During the early days of the pandemic, when we were ‘all in it together’, police forces attracted criticism for rounding on members of the public doing their best to establish new daily routines.

Such coercion threatened to undermine efforts by state governments to strike an appropriate balance between upholding liberty and securing the health and well-being of their citizens.

The civic bond between state, citizen, and community is preserved, especially in demanding times, by honouring the web of mutually owed duties and responsibilities lying at the heart of civil society.

This bond is not expressed solely in terms of law but also in acceptance by citizen and community of the moral legitimacy of action by the state. When that acceptance frays, so does the civic bond.

Covid-19 has imposed an enormous strain on Australia, one that is now compounded by the apparent disintegration of our nation into a collection of dis-federated and rivalrous colonies.

Sealed borders, divided — and grieving — families, and the pitting of one group of Australians against another all contribute to the imposition of an intolerable strain on our society.

State and territory leaders now owe a moral obligation to set aside short-term political opportunism and pay immediate attention to restoring our virtuous civic culture.

The task leaders face of forging strong civic bonds between all Australians — wherever they live — is urgent. The moral responsibility to do so has never been more pressing.