It is hard to believe this election is coming not just at a time when global politics and the economy are in turmoil but when Australia has just emerged from the biggest social upheaval in peacetime.

It might seem especially odd since Australia’s response to Covid was so utterly political. ‘Political’ does not just mean partisan political, although it did often descend to that, but political in the sense that there was a cast-iron certainty that of course government could stop Covid—it was just a matter of political will. The pandemic measures may have been proposed by public health officials but the certainty they would work was political. This core belief, commonly known as ‘Zero Covid’, underpinned some of the most drastic measures the west has seen, even compared to wartime. It had some backing in the medical profession but little manifestation in reality. ZeroCovid activists on social media would point to this and that country that was stopping Covid—until they were not. The ideology is now going through its grim death throes where it, like the virus, began, and ZeroCovid activists have become curiously silent.