Within the space of weeks, Australia has been transformed into a command economy.

Businesses are being told whether they can or cannot open and how they must operate, consumers are subject to formal and informal rationing, workers are directed to stay home, or, in the case of schoolteachers, until now ordered to turn up regardless of risk.

All of...

Overjoyed. That’s not a word epidemiologists normally use, but that’s how I felt after hearing Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s announcement about New Zealand’s COVID-19 shutdown of everything except essential services for at least four weeks from midnight on Wednesday. More than anything, I just...

As the country moves into lockdown mode in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are increasingly faced with serious ethical questions about what ordinary people should be obliged to do for others.

These challenges can perhaps best be seen in the outrage as people flocked to Bondi Beach and packed into pubs and cafes over the...