It’s official. Australia’s pandemic will continue well into 2022, even as other major economies reopen with populations effectively fully vaccinated.
“The government has also not set, nor has any plans to set any new targets for completing first doses,” Scott Morrison said yesterday — on Facebook, not by way of a media release, for messaging reasons doubtless carefully considered within his office. “While we would like to see these doses completed before the end of the year, it is not possible to set such targets given the many uncertainties involved.”
That threw Dan Tehan under a bus, given only hours earlier the trade minister had said “that is definitely the aim, that is the goal we have set: trying to have all Australians have a dose by the end of the year”.
So now we’re onto our fifth rollout schedule after the government brought forward its original schedule in January and boasted it would vaccinate four million people by the start of April.
The penny might have now dropped with Morrison and his team that such is his reputation for mendacity and so disastrous has been the rollout so far that any new targets announced by the government would be met with universal incredulity. Even Scotty from Marketing can’t market this debacle.
That doesn’t mean that Morrison has stopped spinning. We are, according to his Facebook post, leading the world — or, at least, in the top seven fastest rollouts. A chart offered by the prime minister has us high on the leaderboard for vaccinations per 100 based on days since first vaccination — ahead of countries such as Sweden, France and Canada, although the bureaucrats at the Department of Health didn’t bother putting Israel on the chart “as it is beyond scale of the graph”.
The truth is, on doses per 100, we’re down near the bottom, behind, usually by a long way, every developed country except New Zealand and Japan, and behind a large number of developing countries as well. The “days since first vaccination” is meaningless — many countries had to put together their vaccination rollouts far more quickly than Australia and have still managed to significantly outpace us, despite the extra time we had to organise the logistics of a rollout.
We’ve in effect gained no advantage in terms of rollout speed from having several extra months to prepare — and that was before last week’s debacle with the AstraZeneca vaccine.
The spin on the speed of the rollout is a lot like the way the government insists on reporting carbon emissions per head of population rather than Australia’s overall emissions, as if the laws of physics will give us a waiver for population growth.
As for the “uncertainty” that Morrison blames for his now being unable to offer any meaningful schedule, the government has known all along of the risks it faced with its vaccine strategy, particularly from vaccine nationalism in producing countries and the dangers of relying too heavily on a small number of vaccines. “We are putting all our eggs in one basket,” Labor’s then-health spokesman Chris Bowen warned all the way back in August last year about the government’s approach. Now we’re stuck with the consequences of over-relying on AstraZeneca and Pfizer.
Instead, it is economic uncertainty that we must deal with: no border reopening until sometime in 2022, constant threats of lockdown, persisting lack of investment because businesses remain uncertain about likely demand, continuing impacts on tourism and higher education (two of our big export industries), and the longer-term impact on demand of preventing migration for another six months or more. And all while the government is withdrawing fiscal stimulus.
The IMF’s take on Australia’s and the global economy is that we’re world champions to this point because of our capacity to lock down our borders and our fiscal and monetary policy strategies, but we’re going to be left behind as economies like the US and the UK reopen and kick into gear. And that was before the rollout delay that means uncertainty for the rest of the year here.
Morrison will need another dodgy graph to explain away that costly economic gap.
It looks like the federal government is telling us it’s OK for them to be absolutely hopeless with the vaccine rollout because the state governments have been able to prevent a pandemic catastrophe. Despite sniping at state governments for border closures and lockdowns.
However we are sitting on a powder keg. With the resumption of international flights there the inevitable risk of further outbreaks, lockdowns, deaths and economic devastation.
The government has had a year to plan the vaccine rollout together with contingency plans. Surely there has been no other issue with anywhere near the priority of the vaccine rollout. Yet here we are with the most useless government since federation with vaccination levels struggling to keep up with the third world.
It’s not really a case of plans gone wrong … it’s more like there never was a decent plan in the first place.
Australia can’t afford to continue being governed by these idiots.
Thank heavens!!! At least one Australian seems to have ‘got it’ and not been a sucker for the grub Morrison’s lies and slimy way of clinging to power as an end in itself.
This message should be sent Australia wide perhaps even the sub morons who voted Morrison last time might still retain some alight trace of intelligent thought.
Yep. Winter approaches & the old style hotel quarantine which got us through, is starting to leak like a sieve. People catching covid in quarantine is NOT reassuring. Feds have done NOTHING to improve the quarantine situation. LNP/IPA ghouls still furious the states stopped covid. I DONT TRUST THE LNP TO KEEP US SAFE FROM COVID 19.
Your coverage and analysis of the vaccine “rollout” has been excellent, and combined with Norman Swan, comprises my understanding of the entire issue. Thank you. However, can we not call Morrison by his self-appointed nickname? Makes me cringe every time
“Scomo” is the cringeworthy nickname he favours himself. BK has used “Scotty from Marketing” – not invented by him, nor, apparently liked by him. But accurate in pointing out his narrow focus.
“Betoota Advocate” Aug ’18?
I much prefer ” Smirky”
Smoko from the fires!
I am fond of sQott.
Bernard, you are too kind. This is not ‘spin’, it is a phalanx of outright lies, both by statement and omission. I really wonder what #ScottyFromMarketing’s happy clapper church teaches about honesty.
Obviously teaches nothing like enough, either to SfM or his cohorts. I’ve long wondered how he and is ilk sleep at night.
If you want confirmation that the Morrison Government stuffed up, with only three vaccine suppliers: even NZ (‘no rush, not much COVID here’, ‘we aren’t a wealthy country’) has agreement with 4 suppliers.
https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/diseases-and-conditions/covid-19-novel-coronavirus/covid-19-vaccines/covid-19-types-vaccines
His innate penchant for short term politics, lack of long term vision, spin and prevarication are quickly catching up with Shonky? “Four horsemen cometh”?
… You can’t fool enough of the people all of the time?
Really !! He sure made fools of a whole bunch of so called educated Australians in May 2019 when he conned so many into voting for him and his scumbag party.
Now what is that old saying about the donkey who puts its foot in the same pothole twice? Bring on the next Federal election!!!
“… all of the time?”.