Democracy in the time of COVID-19

Queensland council elections and state by-elections to proceed in spite of everything; two polls on attitudes to coronavirus; and Josh Frydenberg off the Section 44 hook.

I had a paywalled article in Crikey yesterday considering the implications of coronavirus for the electoral process. For what it’s worth, the New York Times today reports that research finds no evidence that elections act as vectors for disease. Apropos next Saturday’s local government elections and state by-elections in Queensland, my article had this to say:

According to Graeme Orr, University of Queensland law professor and a noted authority on electoral law, it is still within the power of Local Government Minister Stirling Hinchliffe to postpone the council elections. The byelections for the state seats of Currumbin and Bundamba could also theoretically be called off if the speaker rescinded the writs. Since a state election will be held in October in any case, it might well be argued that filling the latter vacancies for a few months is not worth the bother. However, the official position is that neither pre-poll nor election day booths will experience activity amounting to a gathering of more than 500 people, as per the latest advice of the chief medical officer — advice that will surely be showing its age well before next Saturday.

In other by-election news, the Liberal National Party has put Labor last on its how-to-vote cards in Currumbin and Bundamba, and thus behind One Nation, a move that has evidently lost its taboo since the issue of One Nation preferences tore the state’s Coalition parties apart around the turn of the century. This could potentially be consequential in Bundamba, where it is conceivable that One Nation could outpoll the LNP and defeat Labor with their preferences.

Elsewhere:

• The Federal Court has dismissed a Section 44 challenge against Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s eligibility to sit in parliament on grounds of dual Hungarian citizenship, to which he was allegedly entitled via his Hungarian-born mother. The petitioner, Michael Staindl, initially pointed to Australian documentation suggesting her family arrived in Australia in 1950 with Hungarian passports, having fled the country the previous year as the post-war communist regime tightened its grip. However, it was established that this arose from loose definitions used at the time by the Australian authorities, and that what the family actually had was “a form of single use emigrant exit passport”. This led Staindl to twice reformulate his argument, eventually settling on the contention that Frydenberg’s mother was left with the “shell” of a citizenship that had been emptied only by the communist regime’s arbitrary and capricious “pseudo-law”, a factor that ceased to apply with its demise in 1989. This did not impress the court, which dismissed the petition and ordered Staindl to pay costs.

• The Age/Herald has polling results from Newgate Research on which aspects of coronavirus are of greatest public concern. The results are reasonably consistent across the board, but top of the list is “the overall economic impact”, with which 41% express themselves extremely concerned, 36% quite concerned, 19% slightly concerned and 4% not at all concerned. “Regular health services not being available” produces similar results of 35%, 32%, 25% and 8%. There are slightly more moderate results for other questions on health impacts and “shortages of food, toilet paper and other essentials”, although in all cases the combination for extremely concerned and quite concerned is well above 50%. The poll is an “online tracking study of more than 1000 Australians, taken between Wednesday and Saturday last week”.

• The West Australian ($) also has a WA-only coronavirus poll, which finds 66% supporting cancellation of large sporting events, 45% for night venues, 35% for cinemas and theatres, 34% for gyms and leisure centres, 29% for schools, 28% for universities, 22% for shopping centres and 16% apiece for restaurants and cafes and public transport. Fifty-one per cent of respondents agreed the government had been fully open and honest about the risks and implications of the virus, with 25% disagreeing. The poll was conducted Friday and Saturday by Painted Dog Research from a sample of 890.

• The count for the Northern Territory’s Johnston by-election was finalised on Friday, with Labor’s Joel Bowden winning at the final count over Steven Klose of the Territory Alliance by 1731 votes (52.6%) to (47.4%), in the absence of any surprises in the full preference count. With no candidate polling more than 29.9% on the primary vote, the latter was always an abstract possibility, but the result after the previous exclusion was not particularly close, with Bowden on 1275 (38.7%), Klose on 1110 (33.7%) and Greens candidate Aiya Goodrich Carttling on 907 (27.6%). It seems unlikely that preferences would have favoured the Greens even if it had been otherwise. My live results facility now records the final numbers – there will be more where this came from on this site with the Queensland elections on Saturday week, certainly with the state by-elections, and perhaps also for the Brisbane City Council elections, depending on how things go.

Note also two new posts below this one, one dealing with a new poll of state voting intention in Tasmania, the other being Adrian Beaumont’s latest contribution on the Democratic primaries in the United States.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

3,538 comments on “Democracy in the time of COVID-19”

Comments Page 60 of 71
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  1. Oakeshott Country says:
    Saturday, March 21, 2020 at 3:19 pm

    Shellbell
    The Labor states need to pick up their game

    Two legs good, Four legs better

    Are we at the beginning of the story or the end. Who are the pigs, the faith based team or the one that likes to use experts in their field?

  4. ‘lizzie says:
    Saturday, March 21, 2020 at 4:26 pm

    I still can’t understand the rationale behind allowing football games to continue, if they’re contact sports.’

    One of my nieces has an AFL footy player partner. She is a teacher.
    She reckons that if she can be Virus fodder, so can he.

  7. LR

    [I’m not sure the infected, or critical ill, or their families, or the health workers working their buts off would care.]

    I am sure they don’t but policy is shaped (or should be), in part, on the comparative statistics.

  9. Richard Denniss – How Australia can avoid economic collapse in the wake of Covid-19

    https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/opinion/topic/2020/03/21/how-australia-can-avoid-economic-collapse-the-wake-covid-19/15847092009558

    For decades, Australians have been sold an imagined poverty. We have been told we need to “rein in” government spending – that if we want to spend more on health or education, we will need to spend less on the age pension or childcare. The Coalition even has an arbitrary cap on the size of the public sector – 23.9 per cent of gross domestic product. Such bizarre targets, which have nothing to do with economic theory, have proved a powerful rhetorical tool.

    But the reality is that if we had a bigger public sector today, we would be better prepared to weather the health and economic crises triggered by the coronavirus. Hopefully, by the time we come through this, we will have learnt that lesson once and for all. Because nobody thinks “the market” is best placed to tackle the coronavirus. Nobody thinks governments should step back and let the private sector step in. One of the first casualties of Covid-19 in Australia is the neoliberal rhetoric about government spending being a “cost” to the economy.
    :::
    But neoliberalism is all about delay and dissembling. For decades, we have been told that if we cut spending on health and welfare today, we can grow the pie and all be better off in the future. Of course, in reality, if we had spent a lot more on the health system, we would be better off today and in the future.

    Promising the world in the future and blaming your opponents for the present has worked a treat for successive Australian governments – but the government can’t spin its way out of recession or a pandemic. Blaming Labor, the unions or the states won’t work, and in Covid-19 the Coalition has finally encountered a group of victims whom it can’t blame either.
    :::
    The neoliberal fairytale – the smaller the government, the richer the country – is about to do enormous damage to the health and wealth of nations, not least the United States. The past decisions of governments will play a role in how countries cope with the coronavirus, as much as the decisions they make in the coming weeks. Those with well-funded public health systems and spare capacity will save a lot more lives and incur smaller economic costs.
    :::
    Australia is one of the richest countries in the world. While the value of our investments and the size of our economy will likely be smaller in six months’ time, we will still be one of the richest countries in the world when this crisis is over. No good will come of Covid-19, in terms of our health or our wealth, but with luck, the virus will kill off the bizarre idea that Australian governments can’t afford to solve the problems we face.

  10. KayJay @ #2669 Saturday, March 21st, 2020 – 11:02 am

    Boerwar @ #2654 Saturday, March 21st, 2020 – 11:14 am

    My wife’s Aunt, elderly, living in an old folks home, has just been told that the regular visits from her two dutiful (and loving) daughters will now be stopped until further notice.

    This is a decision by the individual nursing home.

    The Aunt’s quality of life is ordinary. She suffers from chronic pain, disabled hands, very limited mobility, and limited eye sight are all constraints.

    The Aunt lives for the daughters’ visits.

    My wife was in a similar situation although no mobility (walking). Does the lady have the benefit of talking books – which made my wife’s life (together with music CD/s) so interesting, educational and comforting.

    We used a little CD player (battery) with headphones. I still have quite a few Audio CD’s.

    Can the kids ring their Aunty every week, send taped messages, etc to keep the communication lines open and give the Aunty and the kids some point of contact?

  11. I have been watching TV ads and many of them now make me feel very uncomfortable indeed.

    Many treat social distancing with utter contempt.

    They are bloody dangerous ads, IMO.

  12. shellbell @ #2957 Saturday, March 21st, 2020 – 3:31 pm

    LR

    [I’m not sure the infected, or critical ill, or their families, or the health workers working their buts off would care.]

    I am sure they don’t but policy is shaped (or should be), in part, on the comparative statistics.

    I have no argument with the “comparative” part or the “shaping” part.

  13. We just drove to Caboolture to pre-poll for next weeks local council elections (no way am I standing in a line to vote next week). Thankfully at 3pm not many people voting.
    On the way we noticed stall holders setting up for tomorrow’s market at the show ground.
    This morning I went out and woolies wasn’t crowded but certainly no where near as empty as I thought.
    What was of serious concern was the numbers of elderly people still going about their business (by which I mean +70, I’m 56) with out seemingly having a care in the world.
    Perhaps working from home has given me a sense of impending doom but I feel that come next Saturday the world will be much different to today.
    On a lighter note the company I work for had drinks & trivia via Zoom at 4pm yesterday. It worked really well and allowed the wider teams to socialise while still socially isolated.

  14. So, in Australia, there will be 100,000 cases in a couple of weeks and 1,000,000 by May?

    Are we ready for that? More particularly will the dynamic and brilliant gang running the joint be ready?

    Will advice to “self isolate” be enough?

  17. Boerwar says: Saturday, March 21, 2020 at 4:19 pm

    “I am reminded of World War Two, when our country faced the darkest of times and yet, despite our struggles, pulled together for the common good and we faced the common threat together as a country, and as a community of countries that joined as one right across the world.”’

    FMD.

    Bullshit abounds.

    That ‘community of countries’ included Stalinist Russia and large swathes of (Maoist) China. It include a system of empires which despoiled hundreds of millions of its inmates.

    *****************************************************************

    I think you are being a little bit disingenuous here Boerwar – I know very little of Chinas contribution to the Allies in WW 2 – but the Russians paid a very great price militarily and in its people sacrifices in helping to defeat the Nazis and many historians I have read agree – Nazi Germany Could Have Won World War II, Until It Invaded Russia

    The Red Army was “the main engine of Nazism’s destruction,” writes British historian and journalist Max Hastings in “Inferno: The World at War, 1939-1945.” The Soviet Union paid the harshest price: though the numbers are not exact, an estimated 26 million Soviet citizens died during World War II, including as many as 11 million soldiers. At the same time, the Germans suffered three-quarters of their wartime losses fighting the Red Army.

    “It was the Western Allies’ extreme good fortune that the Russians, and not themselves, paid almost the entire ‘butcher’s bill’ for [defeating Nazi Germany], accepting 95 per cent of the military casualties of the three major powers of the Grand Alliance,” writes Hastings.

    Churchill – the Russians tore the guts out of the German Army

    What happened after that to their contribution to democracy may well be a much different story …. but ….

  18. I assume that the AFL season will be cut short some time over the next couple of rounds.
    Will they give the premiership to the team on top on points for and against and highest percentage?
    Or will the premiership cup have a gap year?

  19. GoldenSmaug:

    The elderly went through WW1, The depression, WW2, The cold war, Vietnam war, 9/11, GFC etc.

    The virus is not going to stop them now.


  21. Jolyon Wagg says:
    ….
    If that was true we could all relax because an exponential never goes vertical!

    Surly that depends on your infinity view.

  22. Looking over the immediate Corona-horizon, if the virus mutates in the same way as influenza then the human population will not acquire a herd immunity. In this case, we will face recurrent pandemics. And in that case we will have to choose:

    whether to put up with a permanent increase in the death rate – maybe a lift to between 2 and 3% of the population pa – which would lead to a quite rapid decline in the human population; or

    to hunt virus down and exterminate it

    The virus can only survive by spreading. To destroy the virus we would have to systematically cut off the opportunities for human-to-human contagion. We would have to institute rolling lockdowns, broad-acre testing, ruthless contact tracing and related economic repression on an indefinite basis. This would have to be done in every place where humans live.

    On another note, the pandemic is showing that the only way any one of us can protect ourselves in the long run is to think of others as well as ourselves. It won’t be long before all kinds of social sanctions will be applied to anyone who transgresses the anti-virus protocols.

  23. phR
    Phshaw.

    They were not a ‘community of nations’ seeking to eradicate a virus. They were a collection of scoundrels. Most of them had much more blood on their hands than the Virus even before the War started.

  27. Self isolated passengers from cruise ship walking to Circular Quay railway station, where they will self isolate on public transport, all the way home.

  29. Holdenhillbilly

    GoldenSmaug:

    The elderly went through WW1, The depression, WW2, The cold war, Vietnam war, 9/11, GFC etc.

    The virus is not going to stop them now.

    There are a lot of elderly Italians who would take issue with that , if they were still alive.

  30. The development of the pandemic represents the greatest failure of leadership in recorded history. It could have been stopped 3 months ago. It wasn’t. We now face an indeterminate period of social, personal and economic repression and a swelling tide of illness and premature death. The so-called leaders in every country have absolutely failed to protect the human population. They have failed both individually and collectively to keep us safe and well.

  32. Boerwar says: Saturday, March 21, 2020 at 4:39 pm

    phR
    Phshaw.

    They were not a ‘community of nations’ seeking to eradicate a virus. They were a collection of scoundrels. Most of them had much more blood on their hands than the Virus even before the War started.

    **********************************************************

    So – you would be happier if the Germans and Japanese had won WW 2 ?????? …….. at that moment in history 1939-45 it was a case of “the enemy of my enemy was my friend ”

    I do take your point that at OTHER moments of history the British and US nations have ‘blood on their hands” ….but I awake every morning and don’t have to say Seig Heil or bow to the Japanese Emperor …

  33. ‘poroti says:
    Saturday, March 21, 2020 at 4:48 pm

    Holdenhillbilly

    GoldenSmaug:

    The elderly went through WW1, The depression, WW2, The cold war, Vietnam war, 9/11, GFC etc.

    The virus is not going to stop them now.

    There are a lot of elderly Italians who would take issue with that , if they were still alive.’

    Someone born in 1914 is going to be sprightly, I imagine.

  34. EGT
    Your irony antenna might be malfunctioning
    All I read on PB is armchair directors of health telling me how it should have been played.

    (There is never an “i think” or a “maybe” – we are just privileged to have an armamentarium of leading public health experts who can give definitive opinions)

  35. The media are reporting todays cases as a “spike”. Aren’t they lucky that they’ll get to report one every day!
    _____
    They are bereft of capability and responsibility. It was absolutely in line with projections.

  36. While of course the USSR bore most of the casualties in fighting the Second World War and that must be acknowledged.

    But the Soviet Union was instrumental in starting it and was a partner with the Germans. The Russians participated in the conquest of Poland and the Baltic countries in September 1939 and proceeded to undertake atrocities against those peoples.

    I refer to the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact.

  37. phR

    What I was objecting to is the habit of some bullshit artists in casting a golden glow over WW2.

    You could try explaining your POV to the Chinese who are still enslaved by the Chicom dictatorship. You could tell that to the Eastern Europeans who lost two to three generations of freedom under the Soviets. Or maybe you could add a touch of tartare by mentioning the several million Indians who died in the war time Bengal Famine. Etc, etc, etc.

  39. Has #scottyfrommarketing announced plans for local manufacturers (assuming we have the capability) to switch to manufacturing some kind of ventilator type machines?
    I will add I have no idea how these machines work but imagine it’s a type of pump.

  40. So Italy:

    Feb 29 – 1049 active cases
    March 20 – 37,860 active cases

    Italy imposed a total shutdown on March 10 – and was hoping their numbers would peak this week, ie 2 weeks after the total shutdown but are now saying the week after. Presumably they are taking it very seriously now that the army is patrolling the North to make sure people stay home. Lets say they get 6000 more cases a day so they end up somewhere near the 100,000 active cases mark – maybe 80,000 if they are lucky and it peaks early.

    Australia has reached a milestone of 1000 + active cases today. Where do we end up at say April 20 – given we have taken more steps than Italy did at a comparable stage but not everything? Presumably we end up somewhere less than Italy?

    Does our geographical isolation help? I assume if its bad in Sydney/Melbourne/Brisvegas – Adelaide, Perth and the regions are relatively unaffected?

  42. OC,

    All i hear on PB is armchair directors of health telling me how it should have been played.

    So if the medical or public health side of things has been played so well, why does it appear like inconsistent mayhem to the average punter?

    Would it be fair to put the blame for that on the political massaging of messages by our leaders?

    Or was the public communication element of the public health planning and response the worst organised element?

    Genuine questions. The States seem to have things in hand, but the Feds less so.

  43. Aqualung

    Has #scottyfrommarketing announced plans for local manufacturers (assuming we have the capability) to switch to manufacturing some kind of ventilator type machines?
    ———-
    There is no need to panic. Those machines will be ordered to be manufactured the very first day they are needed in a ward or tent somewhere.

    It’s all under control. “Back in black” you know.

  46. OC

    Fair crack of the whip!

    Some of us will most likely die as a result of the decisions made on our behalf on the basis of ‘medical advice’ that never sees the light of day.

    As for your core message, ‘We are from the government, trust us!’

    Well, really?

    Given the well-known shamelessness and lack of integrity and the habitual omerta standards of the Coalition these last seven years, who could blame the peeps from making own views up?

    Personally, I would not trust Morrison as far as I could kick him. Nothing he has said or done since the Virus crisis commenced has changed that a jot nor a tittle.

    My view is that what he did to even the most basic levels of probity in buying the last election, and the highly likely lack of legal authority for a lot of crooked decisions in tossing grants around to buy an election, means that he is an illegitimate prime minister.

    IMO, he should be in jail.

  47. poroti

    There was going to be a WWII with or without that deal. The agenda was set. It was just a matter of time.

    ————-
    Well yes a war was coming because Hitler was set on that.

    You can’t mean that if Stalin had opposed Hitlers invasion of Poland the outcomes would have been the same?

  48. E. G. Theodore @ #2795 Saturday, March 21st, 2020 – 2:07 pm

    C@tmomma:

    Angela Merkel is a Chemical Engineer, iirc. She could nail it better than any world leader, I reckon.

    You could be onto something.

    Lee the Younger (Hsien Loong) the PM of Singapore was an outstanding mathematician (he was Senior Wrangler – top of the year in Maths – at Cambridge in 1973), and Singapore too appear to be performing very well.

    The War on Science in the Murdoch Countries has consequences – we mostly get lawyers (who are innumerate, as recently demonstrated by Mr Bret Walker and Justice Weinberg), alternating occasionally with complete tossers.

    He was also a Brigadier in the SAF.


  49. Oakeshott Country says:
    Saturday, March 21, 2020 at 4:17 pm

    i think there are several issues of time to lockdown.
    1. If the public is not aware of the risk the lockdown will not be enforceable. The fact that large crowds went to Bondi today and a PBer considered going to a birthday party means we are not there yet.
    2. Exhaustion through a prolonged lockdown due to a premature start

    Or to put it another way, Labors response to the GFC would have been appreciated more if we had of suffered a little first.

  50. Boerwar says: Saturday, March 21, 2020 at 4:53 pm

    phR

    What I was objecting to is the habit of some bullshit artists in casting a golden glow over WW2.

    ******************************************************

    I am NOT disputing a lot of what you say Boerwar – they don’t call the US/Americans “THE GREAT SATAN” without justification – based upon their Bombing Campaign and OVERTHROW of many goverments to suit their own selfish purposes …….. same with the British in India and South Africa etc ….. I am NOT immune to the crimes they have commited

    ……. but they did help save our arses in 1939-1945 …..which is MY point

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