There’s this feeling around that the Libs may be finally coming good. That Scott Morrison, for all his smug shilly-shallying, has been dragged feet-first into a kind of Keynesian socialism. That Gladys looks refreshingly purposeful, if only as a mildly morphous sea cucumber to the PM’s wet jellyfish. And that these things together suggest our governments are, at last, pursuing the public good. Uh, no. Think again.

Across the world, there’s growing concern that COVID-19 is enabling authoritarian governments to amass unprecedented powers that will outlast the crisis itself. In Turkey, Hungary, Egypt, Uganda and Serbia this might sound unsurprising. But, reports The Times, even the German government is seeking to access phone-logging data to track its citizens’ movements.

Here, too, there are concerns that new emergency powers could be used that way. Broadly, though, Australia's corona-crisis governments appear more incompetent than iniquitous. Apparently bewildered by an emergency that cannot be spun out of existence, they keep mouthing reassuring words, even when clearly contradicted by reality.

Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy stubbornly insists that, although we know children can catch the disease, “we don’t know” whether they are asymptomatic vectors and they should therefore go to school. So, notwithstanding that kids are bad at both handwashing and distance; that NSW Health advises to keep children away from old people; that deaths are increasing in the young and that gatherings of more than two are banned, schools of 1500 must remain open.