As COVID restrictions ease, is unhappiness growing?

Some commentators here and abroad have been gracious in their appraisal of how Australia’s state and federal governments have handled the COVID-19 crisis since the onset of the emergency at the beginning of the year.

However, there are now clear signs that the once doughty declaration that ‘we’re all in it together’ may be losing its conviction as old ideological positions begin to re-emerge – almost in step with the Morrison government’s attempts to wind back expectations of a brave new Utopia.

This is a move mostly based on the presence of a $70 billion elephant in the room which carries the name ‘how are we gunna pay for all this?’

Various sectors and interest groups throughout the Australian community are beginning to make their cases for a continuation of, or more, special funding – or other forms of legislative consideration.

The key health and economic areas have now been joined by lawyers, human rights and other activists and academics.

The core element of the new concerns is probably not without merit and that is: ‘How and what can we do better when the next pandemic arrives!?’

It is also clear that a great many ordinary people are fed up with the business of coping with the lockdowns, bans, border closures and all the other paraphernalia of the current crisis.

This reality is reflected in nightly television broadcasts of interviews with unhappy people on an upward trending basis these days.

Rising public unhappiness about the consequences of a persisting
pandemic is not something particular to this age.

History shows that people tend to increasingly question the ability and wisdom of their ‘guvmint’ and politicians when times grow tough.

This trend is not new – look, for example, at this commentary, below, from The Narrabri Herald, June 26, 1900:

THE PLAGUE OUTBREAK

The resumption (of Parliament) will bring up the question of the action of the Government in the plague outbreak.

Here again, the question which the public are virtually (sic) interested are being shelved by the politicians.

One of these is, why were lives sacrificed, businesses injured, and great losses inflicted on deserving people by drastic action which the medical profession almost unanimously agree was entirely unnecessary and worse than useless?

Another question is, why, if the disease is due to rats (according to the official theory), were there no steps taken to localise its ravages instead of scattering the rodents all over the city and suburbs?

The answer to this question will probably throw light on a third, which many will regard as the most important of all – how is it that in Sydney there have been hundreds of cases and nearly a hundred deaths, whereas the cases and deaths in other colonies may almost be counted on the fingers?

The disease is the same; the sanitary conditions are similar. Indeed those of Melbourne are inferior to those of Sydney.

The only difference is in the administration, and just judgement will pronounce upon that by the results which it has achieved,