SMH | Was Australia about to put the cash flow of its universities ahead of
the peoples' health in the middle of a pandemic? Was the Morrison
government about to bungle the coronavirus response as badly as it did
the bushfires?
As MPs and senators returned to Canberra this week
for a parliamentary sitting, it was a topic of lively
concern. Government members knew that the universities had been
agitating behind the scenes for the China travel ban to be relaxed as
soon as possible. Some 100,000 of their Chinese students are caught by
the ban and the unis want them back in Australia. Paying fees.
The
Chinese government had been complaining about the ban for weeks, too.
Australia had been "discriminatory", according to the Chinese embassy in
Canberra. In multiple meetings across the government, every week with
the politicians who have let them in, China's officials have been
pressing their case hard.
The travel ban was decided immediately
after the US made the same call. Beijing instantly lashed both the US
and Australia on that occasion – the Chinese Communist Party's official
mouthpiece, People's Daily, calling it "racist".
But,
of course, that decision now looks very wise, more so with each passing
day. The WHO followed suit 10 days later. When Morrison announced the
China travel ban four weeks ago, there were about 7000 infections
disclosed by Beijing.
By Thursday this week that number had
ballooned to 78,000. The number of countries announcing travel bans has
grown proportionately, and mostly they have acted too late.
The
political capture of the WHO means, in effect, that it's every country
for itself. It also underlines the central importance of keeping
politics and other extraneous pressures out of the decision-making
processes on a medical matter. Likewise, China's early political
cover-ups and bungling wasted precious weeks in containing the virus.
The
Australian system for dealing with communicable diseases is less prone
to politics. Morrison hid from the bushfires; he had no such option on
the coronavirus. The Chief Medical Officer, Murphy, does not need the
government's permission to invoke the Biosecurity Act. He informed
Health Minister Greg Hunt on January 20 that he was triggering the act,
automatically setting in train a pre-ordained process of monitoring and
advice.
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