We have a study of 60,000 Australians post-Covid.

It's the first “Australia Talks” national survey, and in it, is the revelation that, if we conducted the same survey here, we would produce the same result.

The result is that, as a country, we love being told what to do. What we thought we were like is not what we actually are.

The Australian would like to have thought they were a bit of a devil-may-care larrikin, and yet like New Zealand, when the borders got locked and the scare tactics got rolled out, we rolled over like sheep.

It is, at least for some of us, a deeply disappointing reality.

70 percent agree that sometimes freedoms need to be curtailed and restricted to keep people safe. Australia, of course, along with North Korea, is now the most restricted country in the world. Even Saudi Arabia has loosened their travel restrictions. Australians remarkably still have to apply to leave the country. It is literally astonishing that they have allowed it to happen and not revolted against it.

54 percent say the government should make vaccination compulsory. The highest number in that category is young people, the people you would have thought would have been the most self-determined, the most keen to chart their own course, and write their own story. But no, they love the government telling them what to do.

But here is the interesting insight, 32 percent think their health and fitness has deteriorated. I find that weird; given at no point could you not go for a run, a walk, or a hike. Maybe they were waiting for the government to tell you, go for a run!

30 percent say their mental health has suffered. Could it be it’s suffered because your freedoms have been taken away from you? And could it be that part of the freedoms being taken away by way of restrictive rules and orders, involved good numbers of people losing their jobs, and having their lives and all they knew tipped upside down?

If that was the case, oh the irony. As a period of free thought, self-expression, self-determination we have been curtailed in a way I would have argued is dangerous, and if not dangerous, certainly concerning.

We have handed power to people who may or may not have any experience or skill. They didn’t seek the job, they merely happened to be in office at the time.

It explains Labour's 50 percent at the last election, we voted like a herd in that. It also explains all the state elections in Australia in this past year.

It's a most unflattering picture. If Australians wanted to see themselves as devil-may-care larrikins, we would have seen ourselves as good old number eight wire go-getters, problem solvers, the home of ingenuity, and of self-reliance.

And yet, we are sheep. Sadder still, we are happy being sheep.