They dithered a bit between elimination and containment, with the PM a bit gun-shy after his bushfires debacle.
Politics has been 24-hour news cycle driven for a while now, with every govt slowly deriving 'policy' and position from the 24-hour news cycle in a largely reactionary, sometimes entirely superficial manner.
Only grudgingly think about a 'policy' if it doesn't drop out.
That's partly why Murdoch and squeaky-wheel, big-lunching, ex-colleagues turned pseudo-think-tank lobbyists and mates, party donors, back-room power brokers and functionaries can set most of the country's agenda.
Also, mining, big business and sme's are important to any govt and the constituency of the present one, and economic health is their principle, or only interest.
If a subject drops out of the media, or fails to really heat-up, onto the backburner it goes - and they can get back to their real job of listening to Allan Jones and scanning the latest headlines so they can appear on the ball.
We didn't prepare like some Asian countries did after epidemics that mostly affected them directly. We had some swine flu, but it didn't have any lasting impact on future preparations.
Too scary and racist to ban exports of face masks or other supplies anyway, or ban, or even scan arrivals. Imagine what the ABC would say!
Irrespective of how it looks in hindsight, the public naturally had no sense of urgency - even now, in some cases, so the pollies weren't subject to pressure to act, and failed to do so on their own initiative (see above for job description).
The incredible transmissibility and long incubation period was not understood, still isn't fully.
Decisions rolled by one by one. Kiddies aren't affected much by infection, why not take advantage of a growing pool of (hopefully) subsequently immune children? Get them out of the way early, before it gets more serious?
Since they lacked testing capacity on one hand and the initiative on the other, opportunities were missed.
Nevertheless, here we are, big pool of untested, infected community transmission about to reveal itself when 20% of locals display serious respiratory distress in a couple of weeks.
Testing becomes more widespread, tracking, tracing, isolation, quarantine, treatment, and hold breath and fingers crossed regarding the extent to be shortly revealed.
However, for one thing, to what extent have parents with children with asymptomatic infection been avoiding infection? Rich or switched-on people stopped sending their children to school. Private schools less beholden to the government, closed their doors. Universities did too, notably Sydney Uni, going completely on-line.
Similarly, sub-critical infected locals were not tested and sent to home isolation - don't bother coming back unless you get near death's door. Some of the anecdotes of sufferers reveal that some of them may have been pretty lucky to have survived at home.
So, the extent of hitherto secret community spread is about to be revealed in full.
Its cause was in the nature of modern democratic politics, piecemeal policy on the run, and vitally, options were severely limited by the inescapable fact of an absence of sufficient testing capacity.
Full lockdown early would have been better, but there was little or no external pressure to do it.
Senior Executive Service in the Public Service no longer comprises a crusty old bunch of experts steeped in their field and the deep corporate knowledge of the capacity of their departments forged over 35 years working in only one, maybe with a stint in a related department.
The SES has since become a nomadic tribe of 'managers', expected and required to ply their trade in several unrelated Departments, ultimately at the Ministers' pleasure, making 2% efficiency cuts every year, come hell or high water. The gallop like nobles bringing their trusted retinue with them.
Still, the govt eventually got serious because the horror unfolding in other countries generated enough pressure in media, public and medical circles to get serious.
Hard to know what difference, if any, our demographics and other unique factors will make. Our big urban centres are pretty big these days.l
