How Australia’s ‘Covid Zero’ strategy left a nation divided and disheartened

The policy worked – until it didn’t. The Delta variant has surged through major cities, an unwelcome chapter for a nation once lauded for its Covid success. Lockdowns now seem interminable – and tempers are fraying, says Stephen Evans

Anti-lockdown protests in Melbourne emphasised the divisions over Covid regulations (AFP via Getty Images)

Before the pandemic, a city more at ease with itself than Melbourne would have been hard to find.

Australia’s second-largest city was voted the “world’s most liveable” for seven straight years until 2017. When Melbourne crashed on the “world liveability index” to only eighth of 140, its paper The Age reported the shock: the city had “taken a hit”.

Even that disaster didn’t diminish its charm. The trams still trundled along Swanston Street past the Town Hall and the magnificent Victorian state library. Melburnians still did their morning walks along the sea front. The flat whites were still the nation’s best.

But something’s changed. The pandemic has rattled Australia, eroding its reputation for the easy-going life where trouble happens far away. Tension rises. The country is fractious, angry even.

Last weekend, 4,000 people attended a riot on Bourke and Elizabeth Streets. Projectiles were thrown at police. Two hundred protesters were charged with offences. Nine police officers needed hospital treatment.

Protesters march through the streets during an anti-lockdown rally in Melbourne as the city experiences its sixth lockdown (AFP via Getty Images)

The numbers don’t quite convey the shock of the image of lines of police in full riot gear, firing pepper balls, packed with what the manufacturers call “chemical irritant” into the crowd.

Most countries have experienced a painful pre-vaccine period, which has gradually improved as the vaccine rollouts ease the return towards normality. For Australia, however, this hasn’t been the case.

The beginning of the pandemic wasn’t too bad for most Australians. There were occasional outbreaks of infection which were brought under control, but for the most part people shopped and went about their lives, barely constrained. Compared with Europe and North America, bliss it was to be Australian.

The federal government policy of shutting the virus out by closing the international border seemed to work, both for the people and for the government politically. Securing a supply of vaccine to inoculate the whole population was not an overriding priority.

But the virus can’t be shut out and the federal government now knows that (the government in New Zealand may be coming to the same realisation).

The policy worked – until it didn’t. Two months ago, new infections broke out in Melbourne and Sydney and the outbreaks are now out of control. Lockdowns now seem interminable – and tempers are fraying.

Part of the problem is the false expectations generated by the relative ease of the beginning of the pandemic. Because the number of infections and deaths was so low, a rise now, even when it’s low by international standards, seems catastrophic.

On a single day in July, Britain reported more cases (51,000) than the total of cases throughout the whole pandemic in Australia.

The protest “movement” is actually a disparate bunch of groups, united by discontent rather than by a coherent ideology

In the UK, there are currently about 460 confirmed cases per million people. In Australia, it’s about 25. In total, there have been less than a thousand “coronavirus-related deaths”.

The result of the unrealistic expectation that the virus could be eliminated is that prime minister Scott Morrison’s approval rating has been erratic. It plummeted to its lowest since the bushfires 18 months ago when he chose to go on holiday to Hawaii and, when asked why he was leaving in the middle of a crisis, simply responded: “I don’t hold a hose, mate.”

It’s since recovered but with a large proportion of undecided voters, and with an election due by May next year there’s a sense that a change at the top could be on the horizon.

The political strategist Parnell Palme McGuinness, who has worked for Mr Morrison’s Liberal Party, said: “It has alienated many of its staunchest and, frankly, most lucrative supporters. Many have told me unprompted that they will break years of Coalition support to vote for another party. Some are disaffected enough to vote Labour simply to punish Morrison.”

Australia’s prime minister, Scott Morrison, has admitted the Zero Covid strategy ‘is not a sustainable way to live’ (Getty Images)

Last weekend’s protesters may not be mainstream Australia but they are a symptom of a wider disgruntlement.

The protest “movement” is actually a disparate bunch of groups, organised only to the extent that participants appear to read the same false information on the web. They are united by discontent rather than by a coherent ideology.

There are, of course, the hard right-wingers. Victoria’s Chief Commissioner of Police, Shane Patton, blamed Saturday’s violence on “angry men between 25 and 40”.

But the angry men aren’t alone. The slogan “Jesus is my protection” was on some placards.

There is also a hippyish element made up of fugitives from the cities to the more “natural” life of country Australia, particularly around Byron Bay on the northern coast of New South Wales.

Apart from rejecting masks and vaccines, they usually oppose 5G and the cull of wild animals, particularly horses. There is often a culture clash with local farmers and long-standing residents who have livings to make.

Saturday’s rag-tag coalition of the angry was the most obvious sign that tempers are fraying.

Unity at the top is cracking, too. Inconsistent advice on the safety of AstraZeneca didn’t help. The leaders of state and federal government are sniping at each other over whether Australia will have to learn to live with the virus.

On Sunday, Mr Morrison conceded that it was “highly unlikely” that Australia would be able to achieve zero cases. He is pushing the states to relax lockdowns and restrictions once 70 per cent of their populations are fully vaccinated.

Some of the state leaders are resistant, and the division is on party lines.

Fellow Liberal Gladys Berejiklian, premier of New South Wales, said that Australia would have to learn to live with the virus and the Labour premier of Victoria took issue with her.

“If you don’t actively suppress this virus then, when you do open up, we will have scenes the likes of which none of us have ever experienced in our hospitals,” Daniel Andrews said.

Disagreement at the top feeds discontent below, termed by one academic as a “dissolution of public trust”.

At the moment, it is a formless anger in a minority and a grumbling discontent among the rest. Nobody quite knows the way out of leaky Fortress Australia. Pandemic Part Three is yet to come.