gear change
Scott Morrison seems fond of the image of the gear change in the context of COVID-19. It suggests that while you are preparing to do things differently from the way they were done before, it is all part of the process of making progress in a vehicle. You are not being thrown out of the car. Rather it is a sign of control and purpose and skilful adjustment. The fact that the vehicle has been involved in multiple car-crashes, including the failure to prepare for predictable massive increases in demand for testing and for RAT kits, is quietly set aside. The vehicle is wrecked but the gears work perfectly.
This particular gear change is the re-definition of what makes a close contact. In the past it might have been a person who sat at a table where there was someone who tested positive, or, as in the case of Pat Cummins, at the table next to you. Or on the bus or train. Or at a sporting event or shopping mall. But now a close contact is ‘someone who had spent four hours or more with a confirmed case in a household or household setting, such as a residential care facility’. This narrows the field considerably.
It is a response to the fact that, as Omicron spreads widely, the testing and tracking processes cannot keep up. People are queuing up for hours for a COVID test, either because they are required to get one or because they feel nervous about suspected symptoms. Then they wait days to get the result. It is not possible to get more testing facilities and staff. The other option is to reduce the number of people requiring to be tested. The quarantine time is also reduced to seven days with a rapid antigen test on day six. This has been agreed by National Cabinet and so is Australia-wide.
Albanese built on the gear-change image by saying that Morrison had stalled the recovery.
The figurative use of gear change seems to have come in comparatively recently. It has been popular in horse racing reporting. Queen Elizabeth was reported to be accepting a gear change, from high to low, after her recent illness. And now it has been added to the ScoMo verbal display.