Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Now 18 months into this pandemic, we have reached an inflection point. With horrific tolls, many nations have frontloaded COVID's impact and are now navigating the delta variant; whereas our geography has afforded us the privilege of time to prepare, we are not immune and have rear-ended COVID's tail. Many Australians have rightly questioned the measures taken and their justifications. The question is whether these are ordinary times with temporary, extraordinary impositions or temporary, extraordinary times with necessary impositions. Are our governments needlessly at war with our freedom to defeat a secondary threat, or are we being called to sacrifice to defeat an invisible enemy that poses an existential threat to the health of the nation? The former, of course, will lead you to conclude the sacrifice too great; the latter, reluctantly, necessary.

There will never be a universal settlement on the balance of freedom and security in a pandemic. The spirit in which most Australians have sacrificed was out of a shared interest in the welfare of the nation—and what is the nation but the sum of its people? In lockdowns, the alpha strain met its match, though we should not forget that Victoria and New South Wales defeated outbreaks with and without lockdowns. In delta, lockdowns have met their match.

A kinetic war ends through defeat, truce or victory. A war against an invisible enemy only ends with succumbing, because behind the alpha and delta variants are gamma, eta, iota, kappa and lambda variants and no doubt more, each with their own risk profiles and deadliness. We are in extraordinary times, but this is not a sustainable way to live. Children are denied rites of passage in education. Young Australians are denied their first steps on the jobs ladder. Families and friends are denied connection. Retirees are denied their sunset years. In human history, we have only eliminated one significant virus completely—smallpox—and even then it was only one variant.

The responsibility of elected government is to steer us towards normalcy and for parliament to draw a line in the sand on the empowerment of government at the expense of the freedom of citizens. We all want COVID zero, but aspiration must meet reality. During a crisis, we have a responsibility to those we represent to speak with candour so that Australians can make informed decisions to protect themselves, their families and their communities. Pursuing COVID zero is akin to defying gravity. If we could, then why not pursue annual flu zero transmissions and subsequent deaths? Because we know it would be a promise based on deceit, as is COVID zero. COVID zero is a soothing lie fraudulently paraded as health security, which escalates vulnerability and risk over time. As Indigenous Australians tragically experienced, the more the gap between affected and unaffected populations widens for prevalent diseases and viruses and their complementary resistances and antibodies, the greater the eventual human cost.

How we respond now speaks to the character of our nation. We should not cower to the threats posed by an invisible enemy, because it brings into question our fortitude confronting a physical one. We all take on the burden of leadership through our responsibility to each other. As citizens, we have a responsibility to get vaccinated to secure our own health and minimise the risk to each other. Our first line of defence is you and your family. Those who choose not to get vaccinated accept that they walk with the stalking shadow of a potentially engineered aggressor, carrying only their natural armour. It remains an oddity that some choose the long-term risk of a potentially lab generated virus over the safety of an equally lab engineered vaccine that has been through rigorous clinical trials.

The rest of us who carry a vaccine shield must rebuild the community connection in commerce that has been sacrificed in the pursuit of health and safety. As communities, we each have a responsibility to support each other as our neighbours and to ensure that health and wellbeing carries on through these difficult times. We also have a responsibility to those that fight to defend and support us, particularly healthcare workers. Councils are the nucleus of mass-scale community coordination and they should always have been approached as such.

And what of the states and the Commonwealth? As the Prime Minister said today: if not at 70 per cent and 80 per cent, when? That's why the four-step Commonwealth-state agreement to transition to a post-COVID environment must be upheld. As citizens and communities accept their responsibilities, states must accept their responsibility to reopen our closed state borders and remove limitations on citizens' freedoms. The Commonwealth must follow and reconnect to the world. Knowing we cannot build a future without secure foundations, people inevitably retreat to safety for themselves and their families. The easy and populist choice for leaders is to pander to that yearning, as the state premiers have chosen to do. If you hold the title, lead. If you have accepted responsibility, rise to it.