Scott Morrison isn’t making many promises. But he’s adamant Australia’s international borders won’t open any time soon.
Last week’s budget assumed international travel and foreign students and permanent migrants returning would not kick in until 2022. And it’s a delay the prime minister seems comfortable with.
“Even in that circumstance, you’re still talking about many Australians, millions of Australians, who wouldn’t have been vaccinated because for (a) they’re children or (b) they have chosen not to be,” he said, when asked if the borders should open if all Australians were vaccinated by the end of the year.
“And you’re also making assumptions about what the rest of the world looks like with COVID at the end of this year, the introduction of new variants and strains.”
It’s a sign Morrison, with an election due in the next 12 months and after watching the successes of state premiers’ tough borders approach, is ready to bunker down in Fortress Australia.
He’s also seen where the voters are at: the most recent Newspoll found 73% of voters wanted borders closed until mid next year.
But Morrison’s rhetoric has shifted as the prospect of an election draws closer. Last June he said he would “push the envelope as much as possible” to get business travellers into Australia. Throughout last year he spoke of opening travel bubble arrangements with countries like South Korea and Japan. By late last year he seemed optimistic about the state of the pandemic across north Asia, and said the government was “looking at what alternative arrangements could be had to channel visitors through appropriate quarantine arrangements for low-risk countries”. Australians could expect a different environment in 2021.
Morrison’s talk of travel bubbles, and optimism about international arrivals has dwindled. By December he was hinting it was unlikely international would resume in the first six months of this year.
The rhetoric around bringing stranded Australians home has also hardened over the past few months. Last September Morrison said he wanted Australia to return to as much normalcy as possible by Christmas, chiding state premiers for their risk-averse approach to internal border closures. At the same time he vowed to have as many Australians as possible stranded overseas home by Christmas.
But Christmas fizzled after a hotel quarantine breach in Sydney.
In January, the government reduced the cap on international arrivals in hotel quarantine, responding to a new, more virulent strain of COVID-19 in the United Kingdom.
Morrison started to concede international travel wouldn’t return this year, and started responding to questions by talking up the benefits to the domestic tourism sector of Australians being stuck at home.
“In this unusual time, Australians who are big overseas travellers are increasingly in a position and will want to more and more see their own country. So that’s going to have its obvious impact,” he said while in regional Queensland.
As the vaccine rollouts slowed, immunisation targets became increasingly vague, and a devastating wave in India spiralled out of control, the government doubled down on Fortress Australia and raised alarm about opening the borders.
Last month Morrison warned that international arrivals would bring thousands of new cases a day. Weeks later, he introduced the India travel ban and harsh, unprecedented criminal sanctions for anyone returning from there.
In an interview with The Daily Telegraph last week, Morrison fully embraced a future of tough borders.
“We sit here in an island that’s living like few countries in the world,” he said. “We have to be careful not to exchange that way of life for what everyone else has.”
And with most voters happy for it to stay that way, Morrison won’t be in any hurry to heed the calls from business and some in his own party to open up. Not until after the election at least.
Should the PM be making vital decisions with an election top of mind? Let us know what you think by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication in Crikey’s Your Say section.
Morrison is completely poll driven…can anyone think of a “core” Morrison belief that he wouldn’t dump in a hot second if the polls told him to? Or at the very least, twist himself into a pretzel trying to convince voters that he was doing something while not doing it at all?
If Morrison is to be beaten at the next election, a highly targeted campaign is needed, one designed to deconstruct the pre-fab Scomo foisted on the public, and recast him as an untrustworthy, manipulative, calculating, backstabbing, cowardly, inept, and most of all – completely uncaring – character.
He has supplied all the material necessary, it just needs someone to compile it, fashion it into a form that strikes at the heart, and then plaster it everywhere possible (despite the Murdoch media bulwark). It’s got to be a relentless barrage too, a la Clive Palmer’s advertising blitzes.
I believe this is the only way to overcome “fortress Scomo”, and that’s the key to the election.
But the Australian msm really consists of Nine Media and the Murdock Press, both very much leaning to the right. What independant media outfits have the financial capacity to fund this barrage? Because that’s what it’s going to boil down to.
Yes, the Murdoch blockade is a colossal enemy to be overcome.
I would rent every available billboard across the country, flood social media, text everyone and try to get one of the stations to run any ads – it’s amazing how cash can overcome ideology with tv and radio stations, when push comes to shove.
A doco on the 2019/2020 bushfires would be something many stations might consider running, which would not be what Morrison would want people reliving around election time.
Another doco on Morrison’s rise to power, going back to his days with NZ tourism, and covering the Towkes’ pre-selection sabotage etc, would also be something that might get a run on a commercial station – if not, then the ABC perhaps.
“can anyone think of a “core” Morrison belief that he wouldn’t dump in a hot second if the polls told him to?”
Not one.
Even his Christian beliefs, twisted for political purposes; indefinite detention of asylum seekers on offshore prisons, but listen to him say that he “prays for them every single day”.
Fortress Australia is not a fortress if you are a Hollywood ‘star’, VIP (whatever that means), basketball star, US marine, merchant of death, cricketer, tennis player, billionaire, millionaire or other assorted ‘essential’ people…….people need to stop trotting out the government propaganda & challenge why so many people are able to come & go, so many people who are not Australian citizens or permanent residents…how many pentecostal high ups have flown in secretly with their families & entourages? Arrival figures are high & need to be explained when so many are still stranded.
Exactly!
Well said Penny. Plenty of planes are coming in. Certainly if you have money and/or influence there is very little waiting involved.
John Howard read the book, 1984, and discovered Newspeak. He never looked back, and now teaches it to all who would follow. His best pupil was his attack dog Abbott, but the present toxic host knows it by heart (having a predisposition that way). Turnbull heard it but didn’t quite take it in. Cost him.
As for thinking about the next election: yes! Everyday on waking, everyday before sleep, and all the time inbetween. That’s the mantra every single day from one election to the next. They’re politicians, folks, it’s what they do.
No I disagree, he did not think it up himself but was the start of imported GOP/Republican and (in hindsight) influence of Koch Network think tanks e.g. IPA, Murdoch and pollsters e.g. Crosby Textor (themselves schooled by a GOP pollster); one can observe the same machinations with nativist conservative parties in the UK and elsewhere….
Morrison will say, spend and do whatever it takes to stay in power for another three years.
if the polling said open up, Morrison would open up in the morning.
Morrison is the most incompetent Prime Minister this country has ever had, the man can’t add up.
As soon as the election is over, the smirking pentecostal preacher will suddenly decide its safe to open the borders, even though, as the Virgin boss says so flippantly, ‘some people WILL die’……..monsters reign.