A horror year, 2020 has brought some salutary lessons. But can we change our ways because of our trauma? Or will we: continue to ignore climate change; bring back overseas students and depend on their privileged place in universities; boost migration to support the housing price spiral; turn a blind eye to inequality and social injustice?
The world was not prepared for another pandemic, despite the lessons of the Spanish Flu, HIV-Aids, Sars and Ebola. Even the World Health Organisation was behind the eight ball, obfuscating, playing down the risks and denying for a time the efficacy of face masks.
Some countries fared better than others because, unlike the US, they had a universal health care system (though that didn’t help the UK); others showed again the stark inequalities of society, with non-whites and the already disadvantaged more vulnerable to the disease and more likely to die from it. Trump’s quixotic treatment of the proposed stimulus package for a time, exposed the essentially unfair stance of conservative politics.
In Australia, the pandemic strained our federation and showed inter-state rivalry that is still strong. Our ‘federation’ is still weak. Prime Minister Morrison’s ‘national cabinet’ proved to be fragile as State Premiers went their own way, closed borders. Victoria, which clamped down hard on social restrictions was smugly vilified by some.
In his attack on Victoria’s Premier, Scott Morrison ignored that border control and aged care were Commonwealth matters; the concerted onslaught of the Murdoch media was reinforced by the selective and disgraceful comments by Coalition ministers such as Josh Frydenberg and Greg Hunt.
Victorians’ acceptance of severe lockdown provisions showed a combination of self-interest with strong communitarian attitudes to avoid harming others. The wealthy skiers who flouted the rules were the exceptions.
On the health front, the pervasive mantra of ‘mental health’ proved hollow, as the number of people, depressed and anxious (for good reason), could not be helped because of a shortage of trained mental health professionals. Trained in what? Doling out anti-depression pills? Counselling on how to deal with the realities of life, how to cope with what is an external, not internal problem. Similarly unemployment, or marriage breakdown? The mental health industry’s claims of effectiveness are not supported by evidence, yet it has become an ‘untouchable’, with almost every broadcast program carrying a warning and phone helpline numbers given in case it has caused any distress.
And the hollowness of neo-liberal economic theory was exposed by the Coalition’s Keynesian adoption of large stimulus payments, only to be cut back just as the economy looked to be recovering. Suddenly the ‘dole bludger’ was a ‘Jobseeker’ and in need of a much higher fortnightly payment than had been supplied to those on welfare before.
We saw banks yet again allowed to lend to risky clients, not punished for fraudulent practices; businesses were also to be bailed out by government subsidies and the new Jobkeeper allowance. Cutbacks made it clear that past economic policies have been misguided and Australian businesses are not the saviours of the economy they often pretend to be, their insistence on ‘saving the economy’ at the expense of stopping the pandemic a clear indicator of where their values lie: money first, human lives later.
The pandemic also revealed the fundamental stupidity of our higher education system. Over-reliance on overseas (mainly Chinese) fee-paying students to cover a drop in government funding, the decline of our TAFE system and Dan Tehan’s ill-informed changes of HECS/HELP fees for domestic students doing courses that purportedly will not lead to an immediate job, indicate a nation at sea on the role of tertiary education and training.
It also showed that being present on campus, or at school, made little difference to learning, causing an unprecedented upheaval in how we conduct our whole education system. Massive spending on new buildings, at the expense of better-qualified teachers, will have to stop.
This applied as well to city-based workplaces, with home-based working online making much CBD office space redundant and expenditure on roads to get people to work more efficiently look outmoded. Old management practices are resistant to change and calls to return to an empty CBD office may fall on deaf ears. Presence in the office was never an indicator of productivity.
In the meantime, we had time to watch the US-Trump experiment implode and to wonder about how reliable our own media are in reporting truth or fake news. Despite a peaceful inauguration of Joe Biden, he becomes president of a divided society close to civil war. Another revolution in accepted ways is needed here.
Given that we do not yet know the efficacy of the vaccines, we likely face a future of repeated breakouts, social lockdowns and disruption. 2020 has taught us that change is ubiquitous, and our political and social institutions are no longer fit for purpose. What a year it was, not altogether wasted, if only such rethinks would occur.
The epidemic has been a circuit breaker for much that is wrong with Western capitalist systems. But have our opportunistic, dullard politicians noticed? Let alone are they capable of seizing the day?
Dr Don Edgar, OAM, is a sociologist, an Ambassador for NARI (National Ageing Research Institute) and Foundation Director of the Australian Institute of Family Studies.
Comments
6 responses to “Covid-19 has been a circuit breaker. Now we need to flip a different switch”
Much to reflect on here Don. My fear is that our responses will be little different to those that occurred after the GFC. The considerable talk about changing our ways quickly reverted to business-as-usual. Inequality has continued to worsen and our leaders remain clueless. Frydenberg sings from the Thatcher hymn sheet, Morrison stands for nothing and Labor is too frightened to do any thing significant.
So good to see you calling out the mental health industry. Serious mental health issues remain a huge problem. But we know nothing more about the cause of illnesses such as schizophrenia than we did fifty years ago. Until and unless there is a breakthrough, the responses need to be – as they have always needed to be – compassionate, available and financially affordable. Medications have improved but they do not cure. They remain only a part of the solution.
In the meantime, we have to distinguish between problems of living and mental illness. My own profession, psychology, can help; but only if we move beyond the myth of promoting evidence-based techniques that purport to match a ‘diagnosis’ with a treatment modality. This works well for medicine. But there is no evidence that it works in counselling or psychotherapy. The overwhelming evidence is that there is a series of common factors that are at the core of all successful counselling and psychotherapy – all of them grounded in establishing and maintaining a positive relationship with the client.
” The overwhelming evidence is that there is a series of common factors that are at the core of all successful counselling and psychotherapy – all of them grounded in establishing and maintaining a positive relationship with the client.”
Something of “small is beautiful” there?
Unfortunately, while I think 2020 was a circuit breaker for the nation and identifying the “haves” from the “have-nots”, it was also treated as a golden opportunity by the “haves” to make a few bucket loads of cash out of the government and further separate themselves from the “have-nots”.
Much to reflect on here Don. My fear is that our responses will be little different to those that occurred after the global financial crisis. The considerable talk about changing our ways during the GFC quickly reverted to business-as-usual after we had papered over some cracks. Inequality has continued to worsen – and the main responses so far appear to be the rise of autocrats who pedal dangerous promises. Our own leaders remain clueless (Frydenberg sings from the Thatcher hymn sheet while Morrison stands for nothing); or after the last election are too frightened to again put their heads above the parapet – forgetting that in the end they didn’t lose by much.
So good to see you calling out the mental health industry. Serious mental health issues remain a huge problem. But that said, we know nothing more about the cause of illnesses such as schizophrenia than we did fifty years ago. Until and unless there is a breakthrough, the responses need to be as they have always needed to be – compassionate, available and financially affordable. Medications have improved but they do not cure. They remain only a part of the solution.
In the meantime, we have to distinguish between problems of living and mental illness. My own profession, psychology, can help; but only if we move beyond the myth of promoting evidence-based techniques that purport to match a ‘diagnosis’ with a treatment modality. This works well for medicine. But there is no evidence that it works in counselling or psychotherapy. The overwhelming evidence is that there is a series of common factors that are at the core of all successful counselling and psychotherapy – all of them grounded in establishing and maintaining a positive relationship with the clie
Much to reflect on here Don. My fear is that our responses will be little different to those that occurred after the global financial crisis. The considerable talk about changing our ways during the GFC quickly reverted to business-as-usual after we had papered over some cracks. Inequality has continued to worsen – and the main responses so far appear to be the rise of autocrats who pedal dangerous promises. Our own leaders remain clueless (Frydenberg sings from the Thatcher hymn sheet while Morrison stands for nothing); or after the last election are too frightened to again put their heads above the parapet – forgetting that in the end they didn’t lose by much.
So good to see you calling out the mental health industry. Serious mental health issues remain a huge problem. But that said, we know nothing more about the cause of illnesses such as schizophrenia than we did fifty years ago. Until and unless there is a breakthrough, the responses need to be as they have always needed to be – compassionate, available and financially affordable. Medications have improved but they do not cure. They remain only a part of the solution.
In the meantime, we have to distinguish between problems of living and mental illness. My own profession, psychology, can help; but only if we move beyond the myth of promoting evidence-based techniques that purport to match a ‘diagnosis’ with a treatment modality. This works well for medicine. But there is no evidence that it works in counselling or psychotherapy. The overwhelming evidence is that there is a series of common factors that are at the core of all successful counselling and psychotherapy – all of them grounded in establishing and maintaining a positive relationship with the client.
Lawrie Moloney
A recognition of the ‘entropic’ muddle and uncertainty that is born of full-on living, all the way from the discrete and purposively independent pursuits of much modern neo-liberal ideology, to the atomised depths of utopian scenarios cultivated at the other end of the political spectrum.
Time now for ‘off-ness’. What is the essential condition for turning the light on when entering a darkened room? That it be switched off. Banal? Not really.