Accepting the Inevitable: COVID-Zero is a utopian fantasy | Chris Uhlmann | Tom Switzer

hello and welcome to the center for independent studies i'm tom switzer and thanks for tuning in well can we learn to live with covert according to the recent cisu-gov polling australians are unlikely to accept ongoing lockdowns once vaccination rates reach critical levels the polling found that 37 of people want restrictions lifted as soon as possible and a further 34 percent want them ended as soon as the vaccine target rates are met just 10 percent of people think we should stay in lockdown until everyone including children is vaccinated so there's a growing belief that policy makers can't eradicate covet covert will always be with us the argument goes and so according to the critics we need to learn to live with the virus without shutting down the economy and closing borders well let's hear from one of those leading critics of covert zero policy chris yulman is one of australia's most prominent political journalists he's a political editor at nine news and a regular contributor to the sydney morning herald g'day chris welcome to cis g'day tom now before i try to test your thesis about covert zero policy mate let's get a sense of your views you've been a minority voice on this subject in this country but you're not alone my colleagues robert karling and simon cowen agree with you so too does alexander downer now writing in the lead article in the uk spectator prison island the former foreign minister says quote australians have a reputation for rugged individualism grit and competence but when it comes to the pandemic we've seen another side to my country insecure anxious and frozen by the fear of death from covert a recent global poll found that australians are more worried about the virus than any other western country that's former foreign minister alexander downer in the uk spectator chris what on earth is going on here that's a good question tom look the first lockdown i could understand when you think about what happened last year with the pandemic we didn't know what we faced so it made sense for a country like australia which has always leveraged its borders when times get tough that we shut our borders that we basically gather our wits and our intelligence that we watch what goes on in the rest of the world and then we move from there and so the first lockdown i think was justified in the and the you will recall the reason for that was to prepare our hospital system for an onslaught that we did believe would come because at that stage there were no vaccines in fact until the end of last year there were no vaccines so all of that made sense what didn't make sense thereafter as far as i am concerned is this continual recourse to lockdowns something that was exported from wilhelm along with the virus something the liberal democracy should think long and hard about before it does now that does not mean that there aren't risks with allowing that some level of disease to circulate in the community and we have seen that around the world we have to manage those risks as best as possible but locking down the entire community of victoria for example for more time than almost any other state or or city on earth the result of that has been raking breaking problems through that community which we will see for years to come critics will also argue that the policy lacks a sense of proportion if you go back since early 2020 at the height of the the pandemic uh probably march 2020 we've recorded about a thousand deaths uh related to covert uh and most of the people are over 70 years of age uh yet as a nation we record on average something like 460 deaths a day from all causes i mean cancer claims 50 000 australians a year so the argument that it lacks proportion that doesn't seem to be cutting through to policymakers why i don't know because we balance risks all the time just think of cars now we take a lot of precautions when it comes to cars we we put in things like seat belts we have things like airbags now those by the way when we were growing up we didn't use seat belts you'll remember that time and it wasn't campaign the death toll now rose was much higher proportionately in the past than it is at the moment now we've never said that we should stop driving cars so about three million people a year die on the roads around the world uh around about four and a half million people i think now have died from covert 19 in the last 18 months now that's not saying this is not a serious disease that we should not treat it seriously that we should not attempt to do the best we can to protect those who are most at risk but what we've seen from this disease is it proportionally falls hardest on the oldest in our communities and as you say 75 of the deaths that we've seen i think are above 80 years of race now the average age of death in australia is 83. now of course if there's more disease in the community that might well drop somewhat but proportionally around the world i think we've seen that's pretty much where the balance of risk lies so why does it make any sense at all that we would lock up entire communities when there are specific communities that are more at risk than others and chris some of the edicts from many of these public health bureaucrats some might say they're ordering on farce let's hear from dr kerry chant the new south wales chief health officer whilst it is a human nature to engage in conversation with others to be friendly unfortunately this is not the time to do that so even if you run into your next door neighbor in the shopping center in the coles while you're at kohl's wars or aldi or any other grocery shop don't start up a conversation so according to dr chant a simple g'day could get yourself killed that's what the wall street journal uh quipped a few weeks ago chris what do you make of all this it's been ludicrous it's been absolutely ludicrous and that's just one of many things that we've seen throughout the course of this pandemic which are absolutely ridiculous statements from people who are the medical professionals of this country you know one of them said that you should wear masks while you're driving alone in a car we know that in victoria they're having curfews when even the police themselves say there's no there's no health reason why you should have a kirth you think about that tom we didn't impose curfews in australia during the second world war and yet in the midst of a pandemic we've decided that we are going to do that this is an endemic disease this disease will not be now rid from the face of the earth we have to learn to live with it we cannot constantly have recourse to lockdowns and it is clear that the damage that they are doing is greater than the disease particularly to the young it's highly unlikely even with the delta variant that most of the people under 20 are going to suffer a serious illness with this now of course across a massive population there will be tragically be deaths and at that end of the population by the way they are tragic anyone who dies between the age of 1 and and 20 is obviously that's a a tragic early death we would want to avoid that but those things unfortunately in large population groups aren't always avoidable there are other risks children do get hit by cars as well but we don't stop them from crossing the road what we are doing at the moment is imposing on them a a terrible toll in terms of what it's doing to their education some of those children who are learning to read tom do you actually think that they're going to catch up to the course of their schooling we're seeing the self-harm rates go through the roof in victoria are you surprised that's one of the outcome because children have been removed from all social contact so there will be a series of very serious long-term results because of what we've done and by government fiat and when you hear dan daniel andrews say by the way there was no other choice that is simply untrue of course there are other choices those choices might come with more risk but that's fair enough to say but to say there's no other choice than lockdowns is simply to lie about the circumstances we find ourselves in well your message is starting to cut through there's a yougov poll just this week that shows that australians are far more worried about job losses mental health than a large breakdown breakout of covert and death so the circumstances might be changing now many people overseas uh and you probably get this too chris i certainly get it from friends in america and britain they're just absolutely flabbergasted that australians need permission from the federal government to leave the country they're they're also shocked that even fully vaccinated people are forced into quarantine and still mandated to wear masks now at the same time states can just close borders at the first evidence of an outbreak what kind of message does this fortress australia mentality send to the rest of the world oh well it was put very well by a friend of my wife to her who said you know this is from a friend of theirs overseas that for a country of no worries you saw worry about a lot most certainly do i mean i think it's exposed in fact that we are not we imagine ourselves to be this larrican nature that we have the fact that we we rail against authorities that's not true at all australia is a country in terms of its own settlement by the way that um where we have seen that the um that we are much more more like prison waters than prisoners it's taken us 230 years we've actually perfected the prison quality uh this stuff is simply ludicrous some of the things that we are doing and you're right absolutely the idea that we would be telling australian citizens that they are unable to leave the country i can understand why you could make the argument that they might be unable to return but being unable to leave their nation that's just remarkable now you've written that the evidence is uh pretty convincing that sweden got the pandemic mostly right um tell us more well look you can look at the the death the cases in sweden and say no they didn't because there were 14 000 deaths and obviously nearby countries like denmark did better in terms of death but sweden didn't go for the for the wrenching lockdowns that we have seen and they did fail in protecting some of their elderly communities and that's really around the world we've seen that right so it is that one of the things that you have to be careful of and this by the way is is a product and it's another debate of our health system as well we are massively elongating the lives of people at the moment into their 80s and 90s you go back to when i was born that wasn't the life expectancy you go back to the turn of century not the life expectancy now that's a tremendous thing but the other thing that we have managed to do in elongated people's lives is the last three or four years of their lives are quite frail i mean i could not believe that we get to a circumstance in australia we were reporting on the news that someone in palliative care has died of covert 19 and yes yet that is what we do we have to get some of this stuff into a sense of proportion i'm sorry again one of the cops 19 slogans every death is a tragedy look and to the family no doubt that's certainly the case but if you've lived into your 80s and 90s and if i get to my 80s and 90s tom i'll think that i've lived a pretty long and fulfilled life so the death of someone who's quite young or the or the destruction of their future through lockdowns that's a tragedy the death of people in the last years of their lives if they're avoidable we should do everything we can to avoid that but sometimes that's not possible now what sweden did obviously was fail to protect that particular group we should do everything we can to protect that particular group but surely the way you go about that is to lock them down is to say look if you are suffering from an underlying condition if you are above the 80 years of age then essentially you should protect yourself by locking yourself away until we find a way to make sure we can manage this disease in the community now that might not be an ideal solution either but what we're doing now is not ideal this looks not like this disease gave us the choice between good choices and bad choices it was between bad choices and worse choices and my my argument is that some of the choices that we've made are worse than the alternatives that we could have made yeah in your recent column in the sydney morning herald that attracted about a thousand uh responses on the sydney morning herald website i suspect given that it's the herald chris it was overwhelmingly hostile responses it wasn't hashtag i stand with chris i'm pretty sure that but but this is the point i mean your argument is very much a minority view and you equipped in that article that uh australia has sort of embraced stockholm syndrome except in sweden they're actually quite liberated compared to us chris uh you remind me of something that sir max hastings the distinguished military historian a veteran british newspaper editor and columnist he wrote in the london times at the height of the crisis in late march 2020 and he was a guest on my abc radio national show making the point that his generation he's 75 or 74 his generation is privileged and selfish and they should make the sacrifices and make sure that the younger generations have a good life let's hear what he told me this is so max hastings on radio national in april of 2020 i'm afraid to put it brutally our lives and i he's 80 i'm 74 it's all the same thing if we die in this which i hope to god he went and i hope to god i would um in this ghastly pandemic um the fact remains we've had fantastically lives um it it's what happens up to those who come afterwards that is is critically important i do not believe you can say the life of a 74 year old or an 80 year old is as important as the lives of the next generation that's max hastings on the abc's radio national with me so you're not alone chris and for his sins sir max hastings copped a lot of criticism on the letters pages of the london times all across social media so you're in good company but let's test your thesis let's test the human hastings thesis now many people say that covert zero policy you know still makes sense as a strategy for now the lockdowns are justified but we should be looking to open up and live with covert as more and more people get vaccinated what's wrong with that strategy well 80 is certainly a high vaccination rate tom you know it's going to take us some time to get there and are we going to go through these wrenching lockdowns all the way till you catch up with the slowest funnel and don't forget at this stage the west australian premier is holding to the idea that he's not going to open up at over 70 or open the borders at this stage at over 70 if not 70 or 80 then when and there's no end in sight then since we're trying desperately in victoria in one last gasp i would say by daniel anderson get down again to covert zero he's prepared to crush his community for months to come to reach a target which will only be there for what a week a month before he has to face the reality that this is certainly the case that we now uh living with an endemic disease i think now what we're doing is in continuing to punish our communities is doing much more damage particularly to the young than the benefits that we are now gaining look the best of obviously the best jumping off point would be to get to 80 with zero coping in the community then try and manage as best you can the fact that it will then go through the 20 it's still going to go through the 20 that aren't vaccinated you can't keep this disease at bay forever at some stage there will be pressure on the hospital systems there will be pressure on on all of our health systems but by the way weren't we supposed to be preparing for that last year wasn't that what last year's lockdown was all about if our health systems now aren't capable after watching what's happened to the last 18 months to deal with this disease as it goes through the community then our leaders genuinely are criminally negligent we've reversed the polarity in this societies always used to protect their young and that makes sense you know the old saying it on a boat is it was thinking women and children first that makes sense right because you need to protect the young and those who are capable of delivering children into society what we've been doing is protecting the other end of society the very old at the expense of the very young and will come to rule that in the future okay but the reality is that in late august early september of 2021 the vaccination rate is only 30 to 35 percent now covert is spread by people being in close proximity and we know that lockdowns reduce the number of people that we come into contact every day that's a given so doesn't it follow this is the counter argument chris doesn't it follow that lockdowns will be effective in reducing the spread yeah they will we've proven that they will be effective but the question is at what cost and if you're going to follow that argument all the way through it's to its natural conclusion most of the spread now is in households why don't we split up households and put them in solitary confinement stop them from speaking to each other that will work right if we completely isolate everyone in this community if we stop them from getting takeaway food for example which we're doing at the moment by the way in new zealand you aren't allowed to get takeaway food so if we stop people from doing those sorts of things then yes the chances we can slow this spread and perhaps at one stage get it to zero for what for how long i mean it is not ideal where we find ourselves at the moment where the disease is is at a greater level in new south wales than we would otherwise like but i actually begin to wonder whether it's a blessing in the disguise would we ever have had this debate if the disease wasn't spreading to a point where we were unable to contain it which is where we were always going to land now obviously the timing of these things is important there's a social equity argument now which is if you want to get vaccinated and haven't had the chance to get vaccinated at the moment then society should allow you that chance with the least possible risk before you're exposed to the disease i understand that but how many more months of this severe lockdown are we going to see now particularly again in victoria and don't forget they're vying for the record of the longest lockdown in the world and are their outcomes in the end going to be significantly better my colleague peter chulip who's our chief economist he disagrees with you and the consensus view at cis about lockdowns and his counter argument would be that without a lockdown the virus is obviously going to spread exponentially the health costs would grow until thousands are dying by which point the economy collapses and then there'll be even more restrictions this is his argument so and he's not alone i mean your critics would say that your strategy which is shared by many cis members that would deliver worse health and a worse economy chris yep yeah but you're putting up false arguments which people do all the time saying that oh you're just wanting it to let it rip right so your idea is that you should just let this rip and let the hospital system fall apart no that's not all true there are surely some measures that we can take in trying to protect those people who are most likely to die surely that is the first thing that you would do and we failed in that in victoria last year by allowing it to get into nursing homes obviously if it's circulating in the community then it's harder to keep out of nursing homes but now that we do have vaccines for example you know again it was on medical advice that we did not vaccinate all of those health workers in in and around aged care homes so that was actually medical advice start with now the government's decided it should be done it should be done by september but i think the first and foremost we would should protect those people who can be protected and offer them the option by the way of saying you know if you're above 80 you should stay in heart and you should really seriously consider what your movements are now until the stage when you are fully vaccinated don't forget at this stage too a large proportion right now of that vulnerable population is vaccinated we're not talking about letting it rip through that community because they're protected to a certain extent so you know i don't buy this argument that we're just arguing that we should let it rip okay now what's the best way forward from here the the the doei institute they say that if we remove the lockdown and technically transition to phase b when 50 percent of adults are vaccinated um doherty would expect deaths 7 000 deaths within 6 months now to the extent that that modeling is plausible is it a price we should be prepared to pay it's modeling for a start and can i say that one of the things that i've found extraordinary through the course of this entire pandemic is that elected governments have handed over their authority to rule the country to medical experts by the way you haven't noticed there is an enormous array of difference in the opinions that medical experts give people you'd know that yourself from going to see doctors you can get a second opinion and sometimes that second opinion can be quite different so governments in australia should never have handed over their authority to make a decision they should take advice they should weigh that advice they should balance everything and they should balance the the risk of what they're going to do and then make a decision so doherty as far as i'm concerned is a guide to what might happen it does not predict the future as i say do everything we can to protect those who are most vulnerable if we're in a circumstance at the moment where the disease is certainly out of the box in new south wales they are seeking to contain it gladys berejiklian has used different methods it's not all parts of sydney that are experiencing the same level of lockdown those areas that don't have the disease should be allowed to go about their business as best as they possibly can like i say it's not not a choice between doing nothing and severe lockdowns or letting the letting the virus rip in a recent sydney morning herald column chris you talked about the power of the states the power of the premiers and you started by saying quote scott morrison now cannot travel through the country he governs the prime minister is a prisoner in canberra and his political fortunes in the run-up to the next election will rise and fall on the whims of premiers and chief ministers now you have said that um that bone-deep damage to the federation is in store because states now are very different stages of coming to the inevitable conclusion that we're going to have to learn to live with the covert pandemic and that means ultimately accepting covert zero is not an option to what extent is this a real threat to the federation well i think we've had a lesson in federation haven't we tom we knew if we read the constitution that states actually do have extraordinary powers but now that we've seen them exercised it did make the look particularly weak for a long period of time one of the things that's interesting is there's no patch of ground in australia on which the prime minister can now stand and say that he's sovereign in that realm even the ict which was set up entirely for the purposes of housing this parliament he's being told to do what to do by the local government which is just a step above a local council and its chief health officer he came back from the g7 he was the only leader that had to quarantine inside the lodge for a fortnight through that fortnight i thought he looked particularly weak i think there's actually an issue for the prime minister in future any prime minister and future in terms of what power he has over his own movements in the territory i don't think that's a trivial thing at all and we've seen states exercise their power and shut their borders which they can do on the basis of of really any advice that they get now it would it would appear i think once they've tested that power it'll be a hard power to get back they now know how much authority they can yield and they also know what their what their their populations are willing to bear and remarkably australians are willing to bear an enormous amount of authoritarianism in the name of keeping them safe you watch that argument be run out on almost everything from now on when it comes to what the premiers will do these things some of the things that we've given away will be very very hard to get back but your critics would come back to you and say ask you why is it damaging to the federation to pursue different policies in different states i mean why is covert xero not an option at least until we can reach very high vaccination rates that's what they'd say well i say to them why can the states of the european union be traveling among themselves at the moment with covert in their communities and and the nation of australia not be able to do that we are exposing ourselves as really not a nation at all what we are is is a is a collection of colonies and a couple of territories masquerading as a nation i think one of the really big issues tom and it's a conversation for another day that's been bothering me for some time is this sense of what is an australian identity at a time when we face extraordinary challenges from an authoritarian regime that has a very strong idea of what it is what is it that australians would fight and die for together nowadays what are the foundation beliefs that we share which are things which we would not compromise that's a conversation that we need to have and we can't start it from a position where where queenslanders new south welsh men and women and victorians we need to have that conversation as australians the guy believed in this federation i think australia is something that's an absolutely worthwhile project for all of its failings of the past things that we have to own up to we have managed to develop a society which is among one of the best in history i fear at the moment the fragility of that is on display and it will be taken advantage of by those who would seek to divide us all those points you make about civil liberties are well held by many of us at cis but again let's get back to your critics and i know you're writing a column this week in the sydney morning herald about premiere mark mcgowan from wa western australia now many people in wa would say there's no virus they've had a normal life except for the lack of contact from outsiders and um that they'd say yes the people on the east coast don't like that i don't like it i love going to perth i go there every year it's a beautiful town it's it's frustrating we can't go there but from a from a western australian perspective they'll ask why is it an irrational choice for them to have a normal life chris and is the is the way they're living now the way they want to live forever now don't forget that perth airport at the moment is operating about 2.5 percent of its capacity you know if scott fitzgerald said that the sign of a first-rate mine was the ability to hold two contradictory thoughts in your head at the same time and still be able to function now get this last week the evil genius alan joyce said well i might get rid of that london to perth fight and make it london to darwin direct given for example that perth airport shot at the moment outrageous pride mark mcgowan i spent 15 million dollars on that terminal for what i mean he's able to function with the staggering incoherence of what he's just said there are no international flights look up i go stand up nationally yes but but you see but from wa's perspective you know i'm just being the devil's advocate here but from wa's perspective opening their borders will give them worse outcomes in terms of health and economics and are they prepared to live like that forever because if covet zero is what mark mcgowan is intent on having then he's not only just going to shut himself off to the rest of the world he will shut himself off from the major states in australia bark queensland at this stage and that won't last for long covert zero in the long run is not an option because this is an endemic disease every flight that arrives in western australia is a threat now again going back to you talking before about can we can we lock down secure this yes mark mcgowan can get covert zero in western australia he lives in one of the most isolated capital cities in the world he has natural advantages he has his borders which he can close so what he should do if he wants that is to close to everyone forever and maintain the population that he's got there he relies mostly on iron ore at the moment he should have a long run look by the way what happens to commodity prices over time and perhaps china won't always be there to support his economy and then when that comes you might need the help of the rest of australia but you know yeah pick your future if that's what you want that's what if you if you decide that you want covert zero in western australia forever then you're going to have quarantine in place forever for everyone that comes in to that stay okay let's turn to some questions i know we have some from anthony alex and fred fred one of our longtime members he asks what about the damage that anastasia premiere of queensland is doing by preventing queenslanders by returning to queensland plus broader resonance it will but believe this if you can but this has already happened but the queensland mps are in parliament in parliament house at the moment was sent a text message by the queensland government these are the mps saying that they weren't allowed to return to queensland until september the 8th because of the pressure on hotel quarantine in queensland so queensland members of the australian parliament have been barred from returning to queensland by the queensland government has have all other queenslanders outside the state now anastasia palestine uh boasted the other day that you know that josh freidenberg had been complaining that queensland wasn't open she said it's open come on up well she can't issue that invitation he can't come on up he can come up to quarantine when there are enough bids in quarantine i mean is that genuinely a sensible way of running the nation chris we've already seen a few lockdown protests in sydney and melbourne and even in brisbane do you see this is another question from one of our members christopher do you see a mass revolt of the vaccinated once we get a critical mass majority fully vaccinated look you know i have no truck with people who are breaking laws that are trying of at this stage of trying to make sure the disease doesn't spread wildly through the community and absolutely no truck with anyone who's an antibacter because i had two uncles who had polio and anyone who doesn't understand the benefit of vaccines has no idea of what disease can do to people so you know the thing that we can best do to defend this nation is for everyone to get vaccinated but once we get to that 70 80 point if premieres persist in with lot not just with lockdowns but with other restrictions which basically make no sense to people at all i think you're going to see over time mass civil disobedience like they cannot arrest everybody who decides they're not necessarily going to wear a mask in a public place or you know or whatever other restriction they decide they're going to come up with if they make ridiculous demands on people over time they'll just stop doing it now i assume that will be the case australians so far have decided they're going to put up with an enormous amount maybe they're prepared to put up with an enormous amount more people should always obey a just law but i think we've gotten to the stage where some of the things that are being asked the people of australia are unjust and questions do need to be raised and in the end by the way given we don't have a bill of rights tom you know more about that than i do uh in australia i've never actually been a fan of that because i don't want the courts necessarily to run the nation in the united states you do have some recourse by the way you can go and take your government to court in australia what we've seen so far is you don't have that recourse so the distance between electing a new government and civil disobedience is the one that you have to have to bridge here now back to the tensions between the commonwealth and the states anthony in melbourne asks what leverage can the prime minister use to persuade recalcitrant premiers to adopt more rational and humane policies re lockdowns uh all he has as we've seen is the bully pulpit that hasn't been very big from parliament but i think that the prime minister at the moment has caught the wave of the change in opinions as the vaccination rates rise now he is responsible as he has said for the vaccine rollout in australia uh that has not gone particularly well he admits that himself it's been extremely slow of course it did have some help you know the biggest damage done to astrazeneca was done by otagi the expert group when it decided that it would have a ruling in the midst of a pandemic that only people over 50 should get it and then only people over 60. so we've done tremendous damage through our experts to the one workhorse vaccine which we should have had we'd be further down the track now if that hadn't happened however that has happened the prime minister now is trying to catch the wage wave of public opinion and lead it to a certain extent by saying look this this compact that's been done with the national capital of 70 vaccinations 80 vaccinations not with me it's with the australian people and once we get to those marks and now that people know that those are the marks i think that the wave of public opinion will begin to drive the way that premiers uh respond and also just exhaustion i think even daniel andrews himself now must in his honest moments recognize the fact he might you know through crushing his community he might be able to force this outbreak in victoria now down to zero but he'll only do it by utterly crushing his own community and he'll only do it for a very short period of time before he faces the next next outbreak this is unsustainable well let's turn to schools chris uh glenn faye who runs our education program he's tuned in and cited the ugov polling that shows that one in three australians thinks schools should remain closed even once vaccination targets have been met one in three extraordinary at the same time a majority say children are suffering educational costs so the question here is how do you make sense of this paradox well to care for younger generations we should stop knocking them down because all the evidence that we have so far is the lockdowns are doing way more damage than the disease ever would to them now looking around the world even at the delta virus variant and of course these things can change we might get more information but at this stage children are not likely to suffer major effects from this disease and of course as i say in a large population some will get sick and some will die but what we've seen is that that is certainly not the case for the vast majority of children they will suffer a mild disease or most of them will be asymptomatic what is happening to them right now in these lockdowns is their education is being destroyed their lives are being destroyed their chances of leaving leading the life of a normal 5 10 15 year old is being robbed from them for years to protect people that are their grandparents i mean their grandparents should be leading the revolution to allow their children to be liberated it's not a choice between protecting our children from covert 19 and as you know that there's some great outcome what we're talking about is is the extraordinary dislocation and damage being done by lockdowns and exposing them to a disease which is unlikely to harm most of them uh i i think that as far as i'm concerned on the balance of risk there it's already really really weighted against them and so that's the choice that needs to be made that choice is easy let them out and a reminder that the media with rare exceptions such as you at the nine network and adam crichton uh at the uh at the australian newspaper the media really i mean the conventional wisdom has been intoxicating and that brings me to the next question by alex another one of our supporters great to have you tuning in alex he asks at what point should the media look at themselves in the mirror after helping create hesitancy read the astrazeneca vaccine due to hysterical reporting of blood clotting issues and yet the media at the same time are highly critical of the slow vaccine rollout when will the media look at themselves chris look one of the things i've always said about the media look everything that you say about us is true the only thing i would add to that is that now that we have social media and each and every one of you as a broadcaster is it you turned out to be way worse than we ever have though you look at the mainstream media versus what you can do in the same broadcast from your phone boy i'm sorry the balance of that is that you're way worse than us but that doesn't make us great and i agree with you look i found it astounding when we went through last year with victoria the daily death count of people who were in their 90s and some at least one on one occasion someone who is over a hundred years of age as though this was a tragedy now i'm not taking away the loss that any family would feel of a loved one you know i have been through the loss of my mother and father i understand what that is like my father died in his 80s by the way after having been sick for three or four years and in the end his death was in fact a blessed relief now i'm not saying that's the case with each and every one of these deaths you know some people who are who are very elderly are living very very productive lives so that's that is not the case but absolutely the case that the media does have to look at this constant daily count of case numbers it doesn't matter how many cases there are what matters is who's getting sick and then yes who is dying but on the balance of that too is where is that falling in terms of our community not every death is a tragedy it's just another one of those slogans that we we tried out anjali she's one of my colleagues here at cis she's a policy analyst a research assistant and she's soon moving to a law firm but she she asked the question it's not just about the media it's also about our political leaders and she asks how can we ensure that those responsible for the pandemic decision making which has drastically impacted our economy and people's lives how do we ensure that they're held accountable uh and that such mistakes are not repeated again well look you know we've had a surfer of um royal commissions um in the last few years and some of them i don't think were necessary after this tony abbott has called for a royal commission hasn't he yeah we we do we absolutely on this one we need a royal commission that the commonwealth and all of the states sign up to it can take as long as it likes it needs all the resources that we can possibly give it because we actually do need to debrief on this and we need to do it with clear eyes and we need to do it with honesty what will happen with politicians is they will say that whatever they did was in the best interest of the people and that they should obviously be held to the standard of doing the best they possibly could at the time this is not so by the way so we can put people in jail or that we can vilify them we need to know what worked and what didn't work and we need to look clear-eyed around the world because there are lots of different ways of dealing with this and one of the best places i think to look is to what happened in the united states where different states did very very different things and again when you look at the death rates between states some of those that locked down very hard didn't do particularly better or worse than those who didn't lock down much at all so you know that's that's data that's worth looking at we need to gather in every piece of information we need to analyze it we need to have a clear-eyed look at uh what's going on uh not just the media uh and the politicians or the political decision makers in leadership uh whether it be our elected representatives or bureaucrats it's also the political opposition scott from brisbane has asked why have the opposition's just been quiet about this issue especially now that there's clearly more skepticism of covert zero policy how do you account for the positions of all the various state and federal oppositions can uh chris well what we've seen so far is that governments have been massively rewarded for being extremely conservative uh that's been the electoral outcome of everything that we've seen so far scott morrison will be hoping that that's the outcome of the next federal election but he might find himself in somewhat of a different position so if you're an opposition you've got nowhere to go what do you do you can't argue against what the government's doing if 80 of the population says they're doing the right thing look what happened in western australia no one went harder than mark mcgowan he now leads a one-party state he probably thinks that's a great thing i would think that in a democracy that's a bad thing a friend of mine from singapore by the way says see look one party states can work look at western australia so um if you're an opposition it's been a very grim time now the federal opposition of course has been sniping at the federal government particularly over the vaccine rollout yeah that's that's bit that has been quite hard on scott morrison because you know there's enough evidence there to show that it wasn't ideal he's hoping by the way that as it gains pace and we hit those marks towards the end of the year of 70 and 80 that he'll be forgiven for that people will see it differently and that he'll lead the charge to freedom well that's his hope for liberation anthony albanese will be reminding him every single day of every flaw that happened along the way talking about the intoxicating conventional wisdom it seems appropriate to end on this note walter lipman one of the great american 20th century public intellectuals uh he once said we're all think alike no one thinks very much uh so chris more power to you for challenging the conventional wisdom you're very brave i know you've copped a lot of nasty criticism on social media particularly twitter look the moral and political problems posed by these lockdowns they have been real and extremely difficult ones and at the height of the covert crisis in march last year there was much to be said for both sides of the matter but today chris you've set out sound reasons why covert zero is not just sustainable thanks so much for being with us at cis chris and we hope to do this again always great to talk tom well for decades cis has been a fiercely independent voice working hard to promote sound liberal policies to be notified of future videos make sure you subscribe to our channel then click the notification bell we rely solely on the generosity of people like you for donations to advance our classical liberal cause check out the links on screen now to see how you can get involved [Music]

Channel: Centre for Independent Studies

Views: 11,111

Rating: 4.7765956 out of 5

Keywords: Centre for Independent Studies, CIS, AusPol, Australian politics, On Liberty, Classical Liberalism, freedom of speech, Liberal Policy, Classical Liberalist, Covid-Zero, Cases, Deaths, Pfizer, AZ, Astra Zeneca, Moderna, Rollout, Mark McGowan, Gladys Berejiklian, Daniel Andrews, Scott Morrison, covid passport, open borders, home quarantine, hotel quarantine, delta, wuhan, export, max hastings, women and children, Sydney, Melbourne, lockdown, asia, singapore, china, jab, dose, testing, borders, power

Id: wq-L609ETI0

Length: 42min 30sec (2550 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 02 2021