Because COVID ... Pandemic Responses, Rationales and Ruses

Edited by: Shirley Leitch and Sally Wheeler 

Published by ANU Press, April 2025

Series: Australia and the World

DOI: http://doi.org/10.22459/BC.2025

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Description

The norms of everyday life were often cast aside during the pandemic years. States shut their borders, mothballed their economies, and locked down their cities. Individuals put family life, career goals, travel plans – even medical treatments – on hold. In Australia, a Government elected on a platform of neo-libertarian freedom and debt reduction, spent like Keynesians while curtailing even basic freedoms. Some citizens protested but most accepted curfews, mask mandates and the shuttering of schools and workplaces in exchange for the promise of safety.

Across every sphere of life, ‘Because Covid’ became an accepted shorthand, serving as both a response and rationale for previously unthinkable actions. Yet, it is always a mistake to take such things at face value.

Contributors to this book look beyond the rhetoric of Australia’s COVID-19 responses to consider where the pandemic has taken us as a nation. We examine economic policy, bioethics, freedom of speech, freedom of movement, global supply chains, public value science, violence against women, the experiences of Indigenous communities, news media practices, the arts sector, historical precedents, and more. What can we learn about managing future risks? What are the consequences, intended or not, of particular policy interventions? Are there new opportunities as normalisation kicks in? Our goal is to offer broad-ranging insights into the Australian experience at the very time the nation is beginning to learn how to live with COVID-19.

About Editors

Emeritus Professor Shirley Leitch is a Professorial Fellow at The Australian Studies Institute at The Australian National University. She was formerly Pro Vice-Chancellor of Education & Global Education at ANU, and Dean at the ANU College of Business & Economics. In 2011, The Guardian named Professor Leitch one of the top 10 social media influencers in Australian higher education for her blog and Twitter posts from @ShirleyLeitch. She has written more than 100 peer-reviewed papers and held more than $5 million in national competitive grants. She has undertaken senior advisory roles for government and industry and contributed to numerous government reviews. Professor Leitch’s research is focused on public discourse and change, including engagement and communication in relation to controversial science. Her current projects include a book on social media, commissioned by Routledge, and an Australian Research Council Discovery project on the communication strategies of the mining industry. Her previous roles in Australia and New Zealand include Deputy Vice-Chancellor Academic at Swinburne University, Dean of Commerce at the University of Wollongong and Pro Vice-Chancellor of Public Affairs at the University of Waikato. She also held academic posts at the University of Auckland, Massey University and Victoria University of Wellington, and is an A-ranked scholar under New Zealand’s Performance-Based Research Fund research assessment system. At Swinburne University she led the Socially Sustainable Technologies Flagship in the Institute of Social Research and was the founding chair of Online Education Services Ltd, a successful joint venture with online employment and education business SEEK Ltd.

Professor Sally Wheeler, OBE, MRIA, FACSS, FAAL is Vice-Chancellor of Birkbeck University of London. She is responsible for Birkbeck’s overall leadership and is the university’s chief academic and administrative officer. As Vice-Chancellor, Professor Wheeler has responsibility to Birkbeck’s Governors for the university’s finances and for promoting and maintaining its efficiency, effectiveness, and development. Professor Wheeler has extensive experience in Higher Education encompassing leadership of both education and research at the highest levels in the UK and abroad. She was awarded an OBE for Services to Higher Education in Northern Ireland in 2017. Prior to taking up her role at Birkbeck, she was Deputy Vice-Chancellor (International and Corporate) at the Australian National University. She read Law at Oxford and received a Doctorate of Philosophy at Pembroke College and the Oxford Centre for Socio-Legal Studies. Appointed as a Professor of Law in 1994, she is an international expert on corporate governance and contract law. She has written extensively on corporate governance, including as the sole or co-author of six books, the most recent of which, ‘Scenes From Corporate Life’ is scheduled for publication in 2024. She was elected to Membership of the Royal Irish Academy in 2013, as a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in 2014 and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law in 2018.