First, trust the experts. Politicians have a habit of thinking they know best. Fortunately, when COVID-19 arrived, state and federal ministers listened to health chiefs.Australia moved quicker than most to call the pandemic, shut the border to China, enforce social distancing and bolster intensive care.This seems logical in hindsight. But in a pre-COVID world, it was impossible to imagine governments grounding flights, stopping the footy and forcing us to stay home.These were extraordinarily difficult decisions, and despite some glaring mistakes, our experts got most of them right. It means Australia is the envy of the world this Christmas.While this has been an awful year for many, particularly in Melbourne, it could have been so much worse. In 2021, politicians should keep trusting experts, and not just in times of crisis. Victoria’s health department asked for help in January to fix a frontline system “in disrepair” and “exposing the community to unacceptable risks”. No one listened. Warning after warning was also ignored on aged care.
Listening to experts is also not an excuse to avoid leading.Too often, the coronavirus risk was tackled in a vacuum, with disproportionate responses based on a deference to health advice.Of course health officials wanted to close borders in Queensland and Western Australia. It made their job easy. Closed borders stopped the spread and were wildly popular — but that doesn’t mean it was right.It was a similar story in Victoria, where Premier Daniel Andrews eradicated the virus, despite promising that wasn’t his aim. The costs of the blunt lockdown — on businesses, schoolkids, mental health — needed to achieve that were not always balanced.That prompts another enduring lesson: government power must never go unquestioned.Curfews and 5km-limits were a previously unimaginable imposition on our liberty. That’s not to say such restrictions were wrong, but the blind barracking for them, not to mention the anger towards those who dared challenge them, was worryingly misguided.
Andrews’s supporters point to his 120 press conferences as evidence of his willingness to be accountable. The Premier seemed to believe that determined display was his duty.There is a difference, however, between responding to questions and answering them. It should not be forgotten his government tried to spin its way out of whistleblower concerns about hotel quarantine, and called the police on a public servant accused of leaking the road map out of lockdown which Victorians were desperate to see.What else has this year taught us?We like to think of ourselves as laid-back larrikins. In reality, at our core, we love to follow the rules. This poses an opportunity and a dilemma for politicians.Public trust in governments was in free fall until the threat COVID-19 posed to our lives and livelihoods compelled us to turn to the state. For the most part, politicians lived up to our trust. The challenge is for them to retain it.
Enforcing health rules with soldiers, fines and drones appealed to our law-abiding inner selves. But authoritarianism should not be the default response in a country like ours.Ripples of discontent could have been smoothed if politicians persuaded instead of compelled. Luckily the mask debate was never as politicised as in the US, but Victoria’s blanket rule — no matter whether you were working in a factory or walking through the bush — frustrated people who should have been encouraged to take personal responsibility.Politicians now know we can accept extreme measures in extreme circumstances. It doesn’t mean we always will, and it doesn’t mean they should continue taking hammers to problems requiring scalpels.Next year, politicians should also remember they get better results — practically and politically — when they work together. While the National Cabinet is not perfect, it provided much-needed co-ordination between governments, and should be used to resolve policy problems that fall in federal-state cracks.MPs who sought to divide and inflame received short shrift from voters, who wanted constructive leadership and saw straight through those performing for their party room and their preselectors.That leads to one of 2020’s key lessons: the power of pragmatism.
Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull often talked about solving problems, but ideology — that of his colleagues more than his own — got in the way. Scott Morrison, with far greater internal authority, has proved pragmatism is an effective prism for governing.Some in Canberra, on both sides of politics, think this is a nice way of saying Morrison is a weathervane, that he doesn’t believe in anything. In truth, he seems to believe most fervently in Australians succeeding, and works to remove obstacles to that.Of course his Liberal ideology influences his decisions, but his success comes from not letting it define them. Wage subsidies, free childcare, doubling the dole — who ever thought a conservative prime minister would do all that?After a year of fires, floods, pandemics and recessions, there’s one final lesson. Politics is a gruelling business, and exhausted leaders don’t always make good choices. Let’s hope they all take a break this summer.
Tom Minear is Herald Sun national politics editor
