Hijacking of Pandemic situation is destructive to our health and lives

WE’RE being told COVID-19 is the main battleground and “we’re all in this together” fighting a for healthy future, right? Well maybe not…

The lockdown in Australia started based on a health perspective, but the pandemic has been hijacked by unions and self-interest parties who have put the screws so tight that the life is being sucked out of us.

The outcome – the destruction of life and opportunities as we knew it.

Put into perspective, the “action” around COVID-19 has been intensely focused in urban areas. So why shut down our regions, the regions of “NoPlace”? NoPlace is the beating heart of Australia which is consistently and negatively impacted by blanket decisions made in the capitals with the interests of city dwellers paramount.

Despite clear political unwillingness to do so, the vocal drum-banging insistence of the teacher unions to shut our schools meant parents and carers were stripped of their right to function effectively and our children were made to suffer not only fear and anxiety but a very real loss of vital education.

While our schools were shut, the shops and services continued to operate. So why couldn’t schools just bring in similar social distancing processes and hygiene methods rather than the rest of us being held to ransom?

And while students were forced to be “home schooled”, shops and other operations – including IWC – got hold of PPE (Personal Protection Equipment) and other safety products by whatever means we could and just got on with the job.

So what have we gained from this lockdown crippling our economy and destroying our children’s education, disrupting families and causing havoc? Let’s face it, our society is not prepared for mass home schooling and in areas of high disadvantage such as ours many parents are not equipped with the skills to become surrogate teachers overnight, let alone have even basic access to the online tools required.

The unions purporting to protect the vulnerable have wreaked massive damage and it is the disadvantaged in our communities who are falling through the gaps. Funnily enough, this message is the same mantra by which the unions perpetuate their own existence.

Eradication of COVID-19 was never on the cards, but the efforts to decimate our economy and bludgeon the health and wellbeing of our communities have been outstanding. There can be no doubt that the long-lasting effects upon the mental health of our Australian communities will be substantial – well in excess of the effects of the actual COVID-19 virus.

If there were one positive to reflect on from this situation, we have been given a chance to see what is being taught in the classrooms. With the NAPLAN results already in, and the admittance that Australia is continuing to fall further behind, it is clear how far off the path the curriculum agenda has moved from the core focuses of Maths, Science and English. With so many do-gooders adding their idealistic information on the world to our students in the school environment, the old phrase “junk in, junk out” is being realised.

IWC has full visibility of the accepted fact social determinants such as low levels of education, unemployment, substandard housing and poor diet all sit behind the cycle of disadvantage and poor health and wellbeing. So let’s fix our learning focus, because a good education means smarter kids, more job opportunities and all the lifestyle benefits that help break the cycle of disadvantage and poor health in our regions.

It won’t be a “fix” for the devastation that has been wreaked through the wanton actions of the unions, but it is part of a solution for our “NoPlace” communities which will need to rebuild after this unwanted and unwarranted union-driven pandemic lockdown.

It is, as always, unclear why rural regions are forced to wear the impact of the city-driven decisions that disrupt our way of life, our freedoms and our opportunities. These decisions threaten the very communities that grow the produce, feed the nation, harvest the rich mineral resources and – most importantly – fuel the Australian SPIRIT which has kept us strong in other equally challenging times and which holds this country together.