Here, we take Coronavirus seriously.

A while ago, I heard culture was defined as “what we do here”. It’s a simple and easily recognisable concept; you can think about it from a scale as broad as global geo-political trends all the way down to what each of us call a potato scallop.

Every country in the world is developing their own response to the Covid pandemic, built on the backbone of their culture. Each society is developing responses that will create our expectations from our government and how we will hold each other to account. In Australia, Victoria has led the way in developing our culture – people in other states may not have lived it yet but they know what’s in store when there’s another outbreak, because now they will also know what it takes to succeed. Another part of our culture: Australians like winning.

Australian culture helped us to set a national focus for how we would manage this pandemic. We decided that we wanted to prioritise protecting our citizens from an increased chance of death from this insidious virus by following scientifically sound advice.  We had our national lockdown, with daily briefings by scientists and the PM. We crushed the curve. We had another flare in Victoria, much worse, but even though it was a longer and harder time, we crushed it again. We have shown how we can beat this, how we can manage this and how we can save our citizens in the process.

Contrast this with the American approach and you can see the void between our cultures open up. In the US there wasn’t a clear and consistent national focus, with the possible exception of economic sustainability due to the election year. An absence of national leadership left the states to find their own way and set the population adrift. People gravitated to the next biggest thing to identify with, which party they vote for. This fractured the population into two visually distinguishable sides – those with or without masks. Unfortunately, without a uniform approach, the United States ended up being a swimming pool with a large peeing section and now has a breathtaking ~220,000 deaths to show for it. It has never crushed the curve – now it’s just surge after surge – and despite this is opening up its industries almost as if there were no pandemic. Illinois has gone from ~1,800 cases/day to 4,200 in just over 2 weeks. We are going into winter. It feels like there is no hope for at least the next 6 months.

Australia doesn’t have this diminishing hope. For months, we have been barracking for Victoria, collectively holding our breath as the numbers climbed, and celebrating lower numbers knowing better days were to come. Now that those better days are here, the tribulations to achieve this shouldn’t be forgotten, nor taken for granted. Victoria is ostensibly free of Covid because of this approach. People will be able to celebrate with their families over summer because politicians listened to scientists, and the community, which already had an inherent trust in the government, came together to make it happen. None of these things can be taken for granted.

Australian exceptionalism often makes us think that it ‘won’t happen to us’ but it very nearly did, and without these actions it really would have. We didn’t see Australian photos of walls of body bags or mass graves because of these actions. But importantly, I want us to remember why we did this – because in May 2021 when the Federal government launches their new budget and kicks Victoria for taking such drastic action and closing down their economy – remember it was the Federal government that sniped and bitched about this approach, that they seemingly never believed this day would come. They will reap the benefits of this lockdown because without it, Australia would never have re-opened. But they don’t get to have their cake and eat it too – if Victoria hadn’t undergone such strict lockdown measures, the outcomes would have been much worse.

Victoria took a major hit for us. They showed that it was possible to reduce the cases to zero by following a scientific approach. They helped lower the national numbers so we could open up our internal borders again. They helped us to learn from their mistakes so we won’t repeat the in future. But more importantly, through their success the Victorians demonstrated that this is what all Australians will do in future.

What this means is the Federal government needs to own this message and drive it home – don’t see it as a point of difference. The Federal government can create certainty with a uniform response so people and businesses can plan. We also need to reject conspiracy theories and stay the course. We need to ask ourselves what do they have to gain? What responsibility do they have? Do they really think they’d do something differently if they were in charge? Because it’s easy to take shots from the cheap seats when you have no way of ever being proven wrong

Proving these actions work has been incredibly redeeming, and will silence the detractors and make us stronger. Additionally, when there is another outbreak, people will look to their government and expect that they do the same thing, because it works. They will expect their government to take fast actions, be implementing improved practices, and facilitate a faster recovery than ever before.

Cultural norms are important because they sustain us – they set us up for future success and inadvertently police our actions through peer pressure. This isn’t the end of our Covid story but it’s the beginning of a new cultural story for Australia – one of which we can be particularly proud. We came together, took smart and immediate action and it looks like we are winning. Keep it going Australia, you little beauty. This is how we do things here now.