Federation

Coronavirus is bad, but we’ve been through much worse


GEOFFREY BLAINEY


IAN CURRIE


As history shows, Australians have faced more acute hardships

The year that has just ended was the most unexpected in the lives of the overwhelming majority of Australians. It is said to have changed forever our way of living and working. But was it such a unique year?

Certainly it was a zigzag year. At first, when the coronavirus gripped China and then northern Italy, there were fears that it might be as deadly as the Spanish flu pandemic, which at the end of World War I devastated most lands and especially India. In Europe in the middle of last year the modern virus seemed more tameable, only to surge again in the winter.

It was like a typhoon, the way it changed direction. Nobody is on record as predicting that in the space of 10 months it would play havoc with the US, the home of medical innovation, and would even shape the presidential election.

Contrary to prevailing opinion, Australia itself has experienced times that were more shattering than last year. We now know that eight centuries ago the Aboriginal people, especially in the temperate zone, faced a goliath of a drought. Starting in 1174 and persisting for 39 years, it must have reduced the population of Australia substantially and caused intense anxiety among most of the survivors. We know of this calamitous drought because in the thick ice of the Law Dome in East Antarctica a deep hole was drilled, providing valuable evidence for climate scientists led by Tessa Vance of the University of Tasmania.

It is not minimising the grief and suffering in Australia today if we remind ourselves that 1788

— the first year in the history of Sydney Town — was far more hazardous locally than was last year. Aboriginal people, having no immunity to diseases prevailing in the outside world, soon suffered from smallpox and other infections. Within two years the Indigenous population living close to Sydney fell by half, according to a well-known essay by JL Kohen and Ronald Lampert; and the traditional form of burial had to give way to sad chaos, with bodies “found floating in the harbour and lying in rock shelters”.

Many British marines and convicts living in the tents and thatched huts near Sydney Cove were soon disabled by severe and painful scurvy arising from a deficiency of vitamin C. Scurvy, crop failures and malnutrition combined to end many lives. The deaths of both black people and white people in infant Sydney far exceeded, in proportion to population, that inflicted by the coronavirus on the suffering people of the US.

Governor Arthur Phillip, fearing that his convict colony might run out of food and, just as alarming, store insufficient seeds to plant for the next year’s harvest, dispatched his only available ship all the way to Cape Town to procure a cargo of flour and grain. The return voyage of seven months was impeded by the outbreak of scurvy among its sailors.

Again and again the Australians of an earlier era, when hospitals and doctors were few, faced a high risk of premature death or prolonged illness. In 1852 a new sailing ship, the Ticonderoga, crammed with 798 British emigrants, sailed from Liverpool to the new Victorian gold rush. Typhus and other diseases appeared long before the surviving passengers were sent ashore to the quarantine station at Port Phillip Heads near Melbourne.

At least 178 passengers and two crew died; presumably the sailors were less vulnerable because they spent so much time outside in the windblown air. On this single voyage the formidable death toll was equal to one-fifth of all the coronavirus deaths recorded in Australia so far.

It seems heartless to be emphasising the more acute hardships of earlier generations, and thus seemingly overlooking the present-day families whose close relatives died all alone in aged-care homes. Maybe I can venture these thoughts because, like other 90-year-olds, I’m standing rather close to the line of fire. But no matter our age, we must learn more about this galloping crisis that has been so difficult for medical experts to agree on and for politicians to unravel.

It is probable that death, especially untimely death, is now viewed differently. In the past 100 years the triumphs of doctors and hospitals, of sewerage and water schemes, and vaccinations and antibiotics, have prolonged human life. Longevity is becoming a right. And now suddenly arrives a mysterious malady that, without any warning, smites that right. Naturally we are all shocked and bewildered.

We are also imprisoned. Our generation more than any other loves to travel and often can afford it, but this pandemic has suddenly erased travel plans. Even travel within one’s own city has been curtailed. In addition there is a general ban on Australians leaving their own country. By strange contrast, during the convict era, the powerful governor did not prevent convicts from boarding a ship returning home to the British Isles — if they had dutifully served their transportation sentence of seven or 14 years.

One advantage we perhaps fail to see clearly. So far Australia has been more successful than nearly every other nation in fighting the coronavirus. Therefore some of our political leaders and health officials, and many humble employees of the aged-care homes, deserve high praise. For generations we have had numerous first-class doctors and medical researchers and nurses.

New Zealand has an impressive record in controlling its pandemic, and with only 25 deaths it is justly applauded on the international stage. But I’m safe in suggesting that, proportionally, it has not performed as well as several major Australian states. Thus, Queensland and NZ contain roughly the same population but the Queenslanders’ deaths are only one-fourth as many. What a triumph, though a sombre triumph! Similarly, to their credit, Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory have each outperformed the proud land across the Tasman Sea.

In proportion to population, NZ has not fared as favourably as the huge Australian tract of populated land embracing seven of the eight states and territories. In essence, if we leave out Victoria and its quarantining blunders, our nation’s record in combating coronavirus has been extraordinary.


1788 — the first year in the history of Sydney Town
— was far more hazardous locally than was last year

But such statistics mask another reality. The impressive gain in lives saved is perhaps offset by lives endangered. How many suicides among the young were recorded last year? The young — and the women too — have been foremost among the unintended victims of the nation’s urgent economic policies. How many people locked in their own homes have suffered in mental health? A major organisation, SANE Australia, spreads quiet gloom in its latest annual report.

How many people with major maladies have drifted away from hospitals that have had to pursue more urgent priorities? How many families have been stunned and upset by funerals and weddings postponed or marginalised?

At the same time hundreds of thousands of Australians, when looking back in years to come, will probably recall the benefits: the ability to work at home rather than endure the congested roads and the crowded public transport at peak hours in cities that are growing too rapidly.

Certainly the job schemes of Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg promptly curbed a dramatic rise in unemployment. They removed hardships on a massive scale, especially in that huge but fragile sector embracing small businesses. Another sign of their success is the huge increase — revealed this Tuesday — in the number of new jobs advertised in the private sector in December. Future generations, however, will probably pay with their taxes for these job schemes.

The nation’s big debts also have been magnified by the closing of the borders by state governments and the lockdowns, curfews and work-at-home rules imposed, and the consequent decline in economic activity and public revenues.

We gain perspective on the obstacles faced by the Prime Minister and his national cabinet if we revisit the economic depression that baffled Australia’s political leaders in the 1890s. Indeed some of our present problems, including the sudden locking and unlocking of state borders, were moulded by that depression. Australia, consisting then of six rival colonies, had become one of the most prosperous countries. Alas, the long boom came to an end with a banking collapse in 1893 and the start of the long Federation Drought. But the economic crisis, more severe than the one we experience today, did spur a radical change in the way Australia was governed.

In 1893, at the Murray River town of Corowa, John Quick, a dour and patriotic Bendigo lawyer, led a group that resolved that Australia could become a federation and a nation only if it ceased to be so dominated by politicians.

The resultant formula for achieving a federation, sold by the persistent Quick to leading politicians, was that the people in each of the six colonies should make the vital decisions at a series of referendums. His formula with its popular stepping stones paved the way for the Commonwealth of Australia.

So the Australian people by their votes created in 1901 not only one of the largest free-trade zones in the world but also removed the old Customs houses and border barriers that had impeded prosperity. This is the irony of the nation’s dilemma today. The premiers have largely regained control of the borders. In spirit the 1890s are back again.

Queensland and Western Australia are now the most zealous in shutting borders. Significantly, they had been the most reluctant to enter the commonwealth. In 1898, unlike the four other Australian colonies, they shunned the initial people’s referendum held to decide for or against the creation of a federated Australia. The next year Queenslanders voted yes, though by a margin of fewer than 4000 votes.

A year later Western Australia voted yes, but mainly because of the enthusiastic goldfields voters who had recently arrived from Victoria and South Australia. The step proved to be controversial. In 1933, in the stormiest episode in the history of the federation, most West Australians voted for their state to withdraw and form a separate nation. They had valid reasons, chief of which were the economic burdens imposed on them by sheer distance and by national policies that deliberately favoured the factory states of NSW, Victoria and SA. Some of those burdens have vanished but faraway Canberra, they insist, still does not always understand.

Perth was not alone in its disillusionment with federation. The Labor Party had long been an exponent of a strong central government. In the federal election in 1919 Labor actually called for the abolition of the states, replacing them with a necklace of several dozen provinces or regional councils including one each for the Northern Territory and Papua. Even Billy Hughes, the Nationalist prime minister, sought more power for the federal government though he did not dream of abolishing the states.

Labor lost the 1919 election, but the abolition of the states remained a vital plank in its platform. That plank was abandoned in 1969, with persuasive support from Gough Whitlam, but he certainly believed that Canberra should be mightier. Significantly he replaced the term federal government with the phrase Australian government.

Indeed there persists a deep belief in certain circles in Sydney and Melbourne and Canberra that the federal system has passed its prime and that Australia needs one government and particularly needs it during this coronavirus crisis. The Constitution of 1901 had effectively divided and apportioned activities and roles between the federal government and the states, but now the overlap and duplication stand out.

An expensive bureaucracy is one sign of the overlap. Three layers of government sometimes compete and thereby misuse money in health and welfare and

— keeping in mind the municipal principalities in some cities — in foreign policy. The creation of the national cabinet is presumably an attempt, in a crisis, to grapple with the problem. It is beyond doubt that the federal system requires fixing here and there. But who will be the fixer?

A federation is most satisfactory for a big nation with a scattered population and a large area. It is, however, not always effective at a time of crisis. In Australia during the two world wars, enormous power was temporarily concentrated in the federal government. Today many Australians would argue that a pandemic is also a war that calls for the utmost power to be vested in the federal government. But it could also be emphasised that this pandemic and its death toll cannot even be compared with the two world wars.

Meanwhile our democracy has been weakened by the coronavirus. Democracy is government by debate. Where now is the debate? Last year, Australia’s depleted parliaments in total must have sat for a relatively small number of hours. Has the annual tally of hours yet been calculated?

Rarely has officialdom made so many decisions affecting personal freedom, without advancing detailed and logical reasons for such decisions. Were schools closed at the appropriate time? Why were golf and fishing and boating banned? Why could priests and pastors not enter their own church? Why should an ill Australian be refused permission to travel across a nearby interstate border to undergo an urgent operation, while a wealthy foreign celebrity is quietly ushered in for a beachfront holiday?

Morrison, in inventing his national cabinet and in seeking national unity, has generously given every premier a grandstand on which to barrack and perform.

More than at any time in the past 100 years the premiers dominate each day’s political theatre with resounding success or at least a display of stamina. Their long, televised press conferences, with most of the questioners partly inaudible and mostly invisible, are not really a substitute for debate.

At present we are citizens of a shadow democracy. Perhaps that is the price we had to pay.

One of Geoffrey Blainey’s recent works is The Story of Australia’s People, now in paperback.


Queensland and Western Australia are now the most zealous in shutting borders … they had been the most reluctant to enter the commonwealth