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Opinion | Coronavirus has exposed Australia’s double standards, quasi-colonial outlook
- Canberra’s muted reaction to the discovery of a new Covid-19 variant in the UK stands in stark contrast to its ban on travellers from China in February 2020
- It also reveals the unacknowledged racism that still lingers at the core of Australian policy decision making, says Daryl Guppy
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It was September 20 when a new variant of Covid-19 was first identified in the English county of Kent. Yet public acknowledgement of this highly transmissible new strain did not come from Britain’s health secretary, Matt Hancock, until December 14.
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Had this happened in China, Western media outlets would have been quick to allege a “cover-up” – but in the event, the UK’s almost three-month delay in notifying the world went largely unremarked upon by much of the West, including Australia.
This double standard could be explained away in political terms. China is considered unfriendly, so for many in the Australian media, much of what China does is seen as part of a dark security conspiracy.
Britain, on the other hand, is on “our” side, so we are more tolerant of its errors and omissions. It is OK for the UK to be “learning about it as we go”, as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said of the pandemic.
Such duplicity harks back to Australia’s colonial past as a European outpost in Asia. It is a heritage that has more than a hint of racism at its core, which increasingly pervades the strategic framework of Australian foreign policy in the region and has been borne out by the country’s reaction to the new UK strain.
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