Since Kristina Keneally blamed lockdown frustration for her Fowler loss, Australia’s political commentariat has been giving her a right Mandy Rice-Davies going over with a “Well, she would, wouldn’t she?”
But let’s hang on a minute, there’s a deeper truth to be taken out of her comments. In our rush to put COVID behind us, we’ve never had the needed reckoning with the actual lived experience of the pandemic on communities hit hardest by the way governments managed outbreaks.
Let’s go back to the beginning, in early-pandemic Wuhan. Just before Australia’s election kicked off, Australian publisher Hardie Grant released Murong Xuecun’s Deadly Quiet City. In all the words written about the pandemic, it’s that rarest of things: a bottom-up telling of eight how-it-happened stories about people in Wuhan at “COVID Ground Zero”.
It offers journalism that’s missing — in Australia, as much as anywhere else — with its promise to “take the reader inside the city during lockdown and introduce you to the people whose voices were drowned out by the blaring official narrative”.
It lets us hear from the sort of people who bore the brunt of pandemic management around the world: gig workers, migrant workers, health workers, social dissidents. True in Wuhan. True in Sydney and Melbourne.
Here in Australia, we think we’ve moved on. We’ve just had a government-changing, post-COVID election where no one — not Labor, not Liberals — wanted to talk about this once-in-a-century moment.
Over those long six weeks of Morrison and Albanese (or his COVID-isolation stand-in) rolling around the country so they could get onto our television screens, these past two years that turned all our lives upside down were strangely absent. It snuck into the official campaign in just a single debate question from Albanese to Morrison over his “not a race” complacency, and Morrison’s opening brag about the 40,000 people alive who would otherwise be not.
Don’t blame the political parties. Their job is winning elections. If they’re not talking about COVID, it’s because their research tells them it’s a no-win topic. Makes sense: remember all those disputes that obsessed politics (and news media and social media) through the pandemic? Lockdown v mockdown? AstraZeneca v Pfizer? Closed playgrounds v open beaches?
The caution of the major parties is natural. These disputes didn’t map readily onto traditional political divides. Rather, they cut across voting blocks, passionately dividing families and friends. Journalism, on the other hand, is supposed to be telling our stories.
Instead, the energy the media expended on crunching all that COVID data and reporting all those press conferences from the premiers all went one way — from experts (or wannabes) out into the ether to descend on locked-in communities.
The work-at-home community (like most journalists) had their takes, of course. But they told us little about the experiences of people who don’t wrangle words for a living.
No surprise then that the communities who bore the brunt of the lockdowns, both in the western suburbs of Melbourne and the so-called local government areas of concern across Sydney’s south and south-west, feel ignored and left out by both the major parties and the media.
Few were telling their stories during the pandemic. Few are telling them now. In last month’s vote, finally, they saw an opportunity to clap back.
The result? An unexpected collapse of the major parties’ vote in Sydney and Melbourne. Labor’s flatlining primary vote clarifies what’s going on: a swing away in safe Labor-voting seats across lockdown-disrupted western Melbourne and south-western Sydney. A swing towards in white-collar communities who could practically work from home (mixed with a swing from the two cities’ increasing number of Chinese Australians).
Lucky for Labor, outside the electorate of Fowler, the swings against it either washed out through preference flows or were blunted by Labor’s solid majorities.
Kristina Keneally’s misfortune was to be parachuted into a seat that was its own ground zero for the 2021 lockdowns. And one where there happened to be a strong pre-existing non-Labor political grouping in local government that was seen to have stood up for their communities through lockdowns.
Give Dai Le the credit of agency: by offering a known local voice, she succeeded in channelling the otherwise inchoate dissatisfaction with the outside political class’s handling of the pandemic and the enduring anger about the lockdowns’ discriminatory impacts.
That’s a lesson the political class needs to learn.
I wonder how much of a role media focus during the election played to this. At a time when COVID cases were spiking and deaths were increasing, there was barely a mention of COVID in the media. I remember having to go digging to find daily numbers, which were much easier to find the minute the campaign finished.
That said, I’m pleasantly surprised that there wasn’t more of a vote for those right-wing populist parties trying to cash in on the discontent. Looking at the crazies they elect in the US on populist sentiment, it feels like we dodged several bullets.
Not only was COVID ignored during the election, there is still denial that 49% of the population (over 65s, those with disabilities and/or with pre-existing conditions) if infected remain at risk of serious illness or death; and that the health system is collapsing under weight of case numbers presenting to EDs. But any suggestion that this is a general public health problem simply requiring say, the rest of us to wear masks indoors and to social distance is dismissed out of hand with the latest mantra of “individual responsibility” taken to mean let those at risk protect themselves and leave the rest of us alone. However, even a high grade N95 mask worn as protection is far less effective unless others (including the potentially infected) also wear them.
That few are taking precautions now not only reveals widespread lack of public awarness of the effective use of masks as a public health measure. It also suggests that the draconian enforcement of lockdowns (especially in communities whose jobs could not be done at home) has created a backlash that now seems to have terrified all politicians from doing anything at all. Worse – thay are pretending that the pandemic is over, when patently it is not, plus the implications of Long COVID are far from clear. A relatively simple measure that could make a difference is a health promotion campaign (as used effectively in the past) to inform and influence health behaviour change. There is no need for “mandatory”.
But political mismanagment continues in the form of denial, greatly to the detriment of the vulnerable and disadvantaged who are simply being written off as collateral damage without acknowledgment. This seems to me to be a frightening social development.
Word.
I can’t believe the paucity of your analysis. The lockdowns in Sydney affected not just the electorate of Fowler but those of Blaxland, Werriwa, Macarthur and Watson and to an extent Parramatta and Reid. This is laughable!! There were some anti-Labor swings in these electorates but Fowler’s 18% is unprecedented. No doubt Dai Le is a well known figure. Fowler is poor, blue-collar, multi-cultural, NESB. KK in a recent Crikey article about it said she was concerned at the high number of Palmer voters. He got 6%. She said nothing about the 30+% who voted straight up for Dai Le. She must have noticed that!? She is in denial and quite frankly, this is a poor article and you should strike it from your resume. “A pox on both your houses” KK says pathetically. She was a blow in – a fact not canvassed at all in this article. A wealthy White failed ex-Premier who got there due to factional power games. Thanks to her, Labor can be out of office for years in NSW. This weakens Labor federally as well and it just as well for Labor here that Gilmore didn’t fall. Albo and others need to wake up to what is happening with Labor in this State and consign her to the oblivion she so richly deserves.
Keneally’s premiership was over a decade ago, lasted a bit over 12 months, was the last gasp of a tired 16-year old regime mired for years in allegations of corruption. But it’s all her fault and “thanks to her, Labor can be out of office for years in NSW”. Give me a break!!
Yes it was over a decade ago and we in NSW are still wearing the consequences for this failure of leadership, policy and execution. She sold off the power stations and we got bugger all for it. She passed over hard decision after hard decision until the Liberals decided things for us to our detriment. She was Joe’s girl, a product of the factions and in NSW the mud and the dirt still sticks. The fact that she wasn’t the only one makes little difference. Would you put Nathan Rees in charge of anything? Non car driving incompetent. Rail from Chatswood to Epping was supposed to go to Carlingford, cost twice as much and took twice as long. I wouldn’t trust Bob Carr to tell me the time correctly. She was in for 14 months. She has failed twice and lead Labor to a defeat twice. There should not be a third.
This reads like the mob who followed her.
“Wasn’t the only one”?? She was last in the line of a string of hapless males. So as the last-ditch option – a woman – she failed to mop it all up and right their wrongs. Of course she’s vilified. As women who have a go – when the system turn to them in desperation having finally run out of options – so typically are. “Joe’s girl”?? Why are you repeating this? So she’s merely a puppet, but nevertheless you blame her for most of it anyhow? This seems to me to be a manifestation of sexism/misogyny pure and simple.
Also it is a “standard” practice for State Governments that when they are really on the nose, they throw in a woman to “carry the can”. And she ends up the scapegoat forever, no matter how competent she is.
And “she” is usually far, far more competent than the jerks who so conveniently toss her in.
“You wouldn’t be far wrong there.”
Beginning with Carmen Lawrence 1990-93 cleaning up after Dowding & Burke had bet the state on Rothwells,aka last chance Laurie.
Simultaneously Joan ‘Jett’ Kirner 1990-92 had the mop & broom ‘to do for’ the cadaverous Cain of Tricontinental, the MFP coff coff, Pyramid fame.
Less said about Kryptonite 2009-11 the better, installed over the able if brief Nathan Rees who had begun to deal with Dilemma’s droppings and litter – hi, Eddie! your grrrrl sends her regards.
Anna Bligh had a special and typically Qld mess to put in order 2007-12.
Not forgetting the Merkin Isle 2011-14 where Lara Gidding did Trojan work after years of bipartisan corruption and incompetence on a scale to rival the ex federal government.
And who can forgett Gold Standard Gladys…?
The main reason “…no one — not Labor, not Liberals — wanted to talk about this once-in-a-century moment.” is that, due to a little thing called climate change ensures that these events are going to become the norm, ably aided & abetted when not actually caused by globalism and unrestrained capital flows.
It was observed that when the Raj laid railway lines all over the subcontinent Kali-Durga quickly sped on the steel wheels in her avatar of smallpox.
The return of mass air travel and sea cargo containerisation, esp reefers of dubious ‘food’ from suspect source countries, will make that 19thC nightmare seem like sweet dreams, coming soon to a shopping mall, CBD office tower (move over, Legionnaire’s disease, the big boyz will do the job) and sporting colosseum near you.
You wouldn’t be far wrong there.
Mandy Rice-Davies? Surely not.
Quite the opposite.
I’m surprised at Warren’s cack-handed conflation of two woman – one a hooker with a heart of gold who had been wronged & traduced and the other…so not as to be the complete opposite.
Ms. Rice-Davies was pointing out a obvious truth, in her plain spoken manner, that someone over privileged, entitled and well connected was lying about their low behaviour.
Kryptonite Keneally was blaming all & sundry, including an unworthy electorate, for her 3rd, serial failure to win at the ballot box.
By their not kow-towing, doing obeissance and being grateful for her magnificent condescension in deigning to walk among them – however briefly on the rare occasions when she could overcome her distaste – it was, in her blinkered eyes, a clear case of lese majeste from the unwashed.
Any word on her next gift from ‘Labor’ – AAT, Ambassador to the Vatican, plenipotentiary to the Hegemon or something even more generous to prevent her spilling whatever dirt she has on SussexSt?
Rumour has it she’s getting an ambassadorship but let’s see. She should get nothing. Banished to Scotland Island forever. You said it’s her 3rd failure at the ballot box. I know she failed in the 2011 election – a fact that we, she, Labor and the people of NSW are paying the price for, but apart from this failed bid what is the other. I can only count 2. Would join a rogue’s gallery of great jobs for the boys and girls – Vince Gair, Tim Fischer, Joe Hockey.
Also failed in 2017 Bennelong by-election against John Alexander when he resigned over s44.
S###. Forgot about that one. Thanx. Good one.