we were world leading on multiple fronts (with NZ)1) stopped...

we were world leading on multiple fronts (with NZ)
1) stopped China flights more or less first
2) stopped South Korea more or less first
3) stopped all incoming flights more or less firsr
4) have best testing regimen for a large country.

All of these decisions were data driven and not driven by politics.
these were the most important interventions. Unfortunately other countries didn’t do the other things as well as us which has led to us doing a forced quarantine to assess the current situation and to enable us not to overwhelm our very highly functional contact tracing regimen. We were also blessed with the good fortune of being far away, and also with the good fortune of being able to learn from natural experiments around the world. Importantly, unlike Europe and the US, Australia did actually learn and did put health considerations first and above the economy, which is why we are going to be the first out of this.

What you don’t seem to get, is that this is both HIGHLy contagious and quite lethal (somewhere between 0.5-2%), and all the places that did not act as quickly or decisively as us have it a lot worse. There is a lot of data (South Korea, Diamond Princess, Australia and Germany) all showing the same numbers , with extensive testing regimens.

This is actually showing up the most effective and functional societies and governmental systems around the world. I would argue we are number 1. It is no different to grading companies on the quality basket- on pretty much every measure Australia has done particularly well.*

* I would even argue that Australia is superior to NZ as we have not forced everything to close but are having similar results- ie we have implemented the most effective strategies and not implemented dubious ones.