The Locked-Up Country: Learning the lessons from Australia’s Covid-19 response (Tom Chodor & Shahar Hameiri, UQP)

After reading The Locked-Up Country, you may rethink your position on Australia’s Covid-19 response. It’s not a comfortable read, but important books rarely are. Authors Tom Chodor (senior lecturer in Politics and IR at Monash University) and Shahar Hameiri (professor of International Politics at the University of Queensland) outline every measure and misstep of leadership during the pandemic in clinical (and entertaining) detail, questioning the legitimacy of lockdowns as a protective measure. The authors frame Australia’s Covid response as a key example of the limits of neoliberalism (or economic rationalism), which left the government ill-equipped to care for its citizens in a global economic crisis. The title is a play on David Horne’s 1964 classic The Lucky Country, a phrase that was adopted as a national motto, to Horne’s chagrin, as Horne had meant that Australian politicians and business leaders were coasting on the country’s early successes. ‘Horne’s basic argument … was that Australia did not deserve its good fortune,’ write Chodor and Hameiri, who posit the same was true of Australia’s Covid response after some early wins. ‘Australia’s success was tenuous, reliant as it was on blunt and ad hoc measures, and haunted by repeated failures … resulting from the pathologies of its regulatory state,’ they write. The Locked-Up Country may be one of the most important books of the year to help us rethink our readiness for the next global health emergency. The prose is entertaining, and the authors avoid jargon but not evidence. Readers who enjoyed Bulldozed by Niki Savva may enjoy this book.

Books+Publishing reviewer: Becca Whitehead is a features and content writer based in Naarm-Melbourne. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

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