Crispin Hull

Covid a dress rehearsal for worse to come

Just as the bushfire crisis was a flaw-exposing dress rehearsal that helped Australia deal with the Covid-19 crisis, the Covid-19 crisis should itself be a dress rehearsal for possibly worse things to come. And the most recent report of the Commission for the Human Future suggests that we would do well to prepare for them.

Indeed, the report suggests we need more than the traditional Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse to illustrate the threats, which can be summarised as follows:

Boomers should repay debt to young

Fair’s fair. The Baby Boomers (born 1946 to 1960) have always moved through the economy and society taking the best of everything – education, health care, opportunities, housing, jobs, income, prestige and tax perks. It is now time to recognise a new big debt.

Because of COVID-19, the economy has been trashed in order that the infection curve be flattened so the health system would be able to cope and not have to triage older people out of treatment.

Pell case shows juries should go

The Covid-19 crisis has put a stay on many jury trials. If we were sensible, the High Court’s judgement to overturn the conviction of George Pell should result in the end of them forever.

Imagine designing from scratch a system today for society to determine an accused’s guilt. You would be laughed at if you suggested you should go out on the street and pick 12 people at random and make them listen to evidence and legal submissions and then be locked in a room until they came up with a verdict and you did not require them to give any reasons.

Rendering unto Caesar

What was Prime Minister Scott Morrison thinking, if anything, when he sent a video from what appears to be his office in which he said in prayer: “Heavenly Father, we just commit our nation to you in this terrible time of great need and suffering of so many people”?

Presumably, the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good god he was praying to for help is the same all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good god that inflicted the pandemic on us in the first place.

It is down to the erratic sociopath

Sadly, recovery from the Covid19-induced economic crash will almost totally depend on the actions of the narcissistic, erratic, sociopath in the White House.

Let me explain.

With apologies to Leo Tolstoy, every market boom is similar; every market crash is different. In Australia, this one is different from the global financial crisis, the crash of 1987, the oil shock of the 1970s, and the crash of 1929 in several ways. Those differences will most likely determine its duration and who are the big losers and who gains.

Why not good action all the time?

COVID-19 has driven other important issues off the media agenda. But COVID-19 and those things driven off the agenda have something in common: the competency of government.

Notice that whenever governments deliver bad news, such as restrictions of movement, they either have the health expert announce it or at least be present at the announcement and always ensure they say that “we are following the best scientific and medical advice”. Government action that affects people adversely needs expert support. Without it, confidence and votes would be lost.

Australia should just leave

The farce this week of two rivals holding separate presidential inaugurations in Afghanistan should raise questions of why the US ever went there, why Australia followed, and once there why have we stayed so long?

The short answer is that the politicians learned only one lesson from the Vietnam war, instead of the many they should have learned. That lesson was that if you are going to be suckered into a war by the military-industrial complex, avoid conscription.

Lessons from virus and fires

During the bushfires and now the Covid-19 crisis did you notice that when it came to delivering bad news, it was the paid public servants, not the elected politicians, who were put before the cameras?

When there was a macho announcement – calling out the troops or imposing a travel ban – the Prime Minister was in front of the cameras.

Here is another Donald Trump-Richard Nixon comparison. When Nixon sought a second term in 1972, the Democrats nominated Senator George McGovern the most left-wing candidate in US history to challenge him.

The result was disastrous for the Democrats. Nixon won 49 states. So, a nasty, disliked, sociopathic, dishonest Republican President can win easily if the Democrats are stupid enough to nominate as challenger someone who is seen as unacceptably left-wing. And that is what is happening now.

The bear is worse than the dragon

When the US Defence Secretary Mark Esper named China this week as the US’s leading antagonist, followed by Russia, it should have sparked alarm. Not because he is right, but because he is wrong, and possibly deliberately so.

Trump and the people he appointed to his administration have consistently down-played the Russian threat, often using a Chinese “threat” as a decoy or distraction.

Pin It on Pinterest