I AM ANGRY

By David Woodbury

A recent trip to the supermarket has put me in frustrated and bewildered headspace as I watched people unnecessarily hoarding basic supplies because of the Coronavirus epidemic. I found myself angry with my fellows Australians who appear to have descended to a mob mentality where the only person that matters is “me”. Fights in supermarkets over supplies such as toilet rolls, paper towels, tissues; hand sanitiser, hand soap, meat, milk, pasta etc. are, to say the least, just lack plain common sense. The big losers here are the elderly and the handicapped.

While some of the panic may be driven by people who have come from other cultures whose background is food scarcity and long queues, one cannot help but feel that there is an element of greed in what is taking place, something that is foreign to the Australian way of life. It is greed that factures the bonds of community more than anything else. It was Mahatma Ghandi who rightly said: "The world has enough for everyone's needs, but not everyone's greed."

Of all nations on the earth, no country is better placed to deal with this crisis than Australia. Many countries in the world are unable to feed their citizens without importing food, A few are able to completely meet the basic needs of their citizens and Australia sits pretty well near the top of that list. We are an island nation with strong border controls that will enable us to totally manage who does and doesn’t come to our country.

Do we really believe that we will run out of toilet paper of which 70% is made in Australia? Do we really believe that somehow the cows all over Australia will stop giving milk? Do we believe that farmers will forget how to harvest their crops? We have received good rain recently, the fields are greening and the dams are filling up.

Sure, as the virus spikes people will get sick and maybe off work for a couple of weeks. Most will recover and go back to work on the land, in industry and public service. Government restrictions will inevitably slow things down but they will not bring us to the point of impotence. Our biggest enemy at the moment is not the virus, but the mindset of people who are in a blind, unthinking panic.

Much of the blame for the present panic mindset must be laid at the door of the media who are so focused on attention-getting headlines that they are impervious to the chaos to which they are contributing. We saw it with the climate debate and the bush fire reporting. The escalation of terminology selected to surpass the previous day’s headlines. First, it’s a crisis, then a disaster, then an emergency, then it’s catastrophic, soon it will be apocalyptic and I am just waiting for a media outlet to use the word Armageddon.

I am old enough to remember the dark days of WW2 where ration cards were used to provide a level playing field. There was no panic. Everyone went about their lives as best they could in wartime and there was a real sense of caring for your neighbour and ensuring they had supplies, even if it meant sharing your ration coupon. It is a far cry from what I am seeing today.

Come on Australians, you are better than this – you have “golden soil and wealth for toil” – “Our land abounds in nature's gifts Of beauty, rich and rare”. (*)It’s time we appreciated the abundance of natural resources that surrounds us and started thinking about our mates, and not so much about ourselves.

* From the Australian National Anthem