CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT

Government officials have today been surprised by an early rush of citizens downloading their controversial new COVIDsafe app

The app was released at 6:00pm last night and by 10:30pm 1 million Australians had downloaded it.

While this initial momentum is a good sign, they still need 40 per cent of Australians to voluntarily download and use it to be effective – a figure that looks like it could still struggle to achieve.

One issue that has been flagged is the fact that the most compliant citizens, the Liberal Party voter base of boot licking post-war boomers, are mostly unable to use smartphones without the help of a grandchild.

There is also the other issue that trust in the government is at an all time low, due mainly to the poor response to the December bushfires, the ongoing sports rorts scandals, and every single thing Peter Dutton has ever said publicly.

On top of this, many Australians still fear the COVIDsafe app could be hacked by China or used to arrest them, despite government promises that hackers will not be an issue, because that’s only an issue when a government website crashes and they need something else to blame for their lack of preparation – like they did during the 2016 Census – and again when 900,000 people lost their jobs and applied for Centrelink payments on the same day a month ago.

Speaking to the media today, the MP in charge of pitching this app, Stuart Robert (Maybe?) says he’s confused by the suspicion surrounding the app.

“There is nothing to worry about” said the same man who blamed last month’s MyGov website crash of a DDoS attack from foreign hackers, before laughing it off by saying ‘my bad’ when he realised it was simply a result of an overload of website visits caused by his own government telling people to stop going to work.

“This is fine. It wasn’t built by us”

“But, I mean, I know that sounds bad. But… umm. I mean. This was made by actual experts. Not people like us”

“I mean…”

“Just please download it or else we won’t allow the sport to start again”

The fact that former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce is adamant there are too many privacy concerns for him to download the app is also not helping.

Although COVIDsafe does have the tick from former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull himself, who is well known for his career as an IT professional.