An absence of caring

Rick Morton’s exposé of the inept policy behind “living with Covid” is appallingly unsurprising (“Exclusive: Robo-debt call centres take over Covid hotline”, February 5-11). It says something about a mindset in government that it can countenance an unprofessional, untrained, casualised workforce to run a public health response with such dire results. This takes dumbing down to an extreme level, even as one assumed current levels of incompetence couldn’t be surpassed. There is something deeply disturbing about politicians seeming not to register the inhumanity of this, on both workers and distressed people who call them hoping to receive credible information. It seems as if the core business of thinking about governing for real people is imperilled. Leaders themselves seem deficient in this. How do we expect decent policy to emerge out of such a vacuous mindset that only knows how to manipulate but not to care, unsupported by expert public services and universities that once used to inform them?

– Gil Anaf, Norwood, SA