In the months leading up to the 2022 federal election, as the two major parties duked it out over the cost of living, integrity, and the climate crisis, one issue barely rated a mention amid the barrage of leaders’ debates, press conferences, and doorstops: the Covid-19 pandemic. Having raged in Australia for more than two years, resulting in once-in-a-generation disruption to daily life, including the world’s longest lockdown, the virus had become all but untouchable on both sides of the political divide. Labor and the Coalition obviously reasoned that the best position on Covid electorally was not to have a position at all. Neither party articulated a strategy to manage the virus, or its ever-expanding roll-call of variants, into the future. For the most part, journalists – more interested it seemed in the then Opposition leader’s ‘gaffes’ – could not bring themselves to mention the C-word either.
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