There’s a lot we don’t really know about the Omicron variant, which originated in southern Africa and has already reached Sydney. But that hasn’t stopped a surge in anxiety and growing fear its great transmissibility could cool off Australia’s brief flirtation with a normal summer.
Over the weekend states tightened border restrictions, and Prime Minister Scott Morrison will convene a meeting of national cabinet later today or tomorrow, ahead of schedule. But he’s taken great pains to point out there’s nothing to fear in that.
“I wouldn’t describe it as an emergency meeting,” Morrison told Nine. “I’d call it a normal meeting we would convene in these circumstances to bring everybody up to speed with the same information.”
It could be weeks before we learn how much of a threat Omicron is, especially given Australia’s high vaccination rates. But from a political perspective, a new variant could lead to more jostling between the states, with a rerun of many of the COVID debates of winter 2021.
And for Morrison, desperate to avoid Parliament and swing into campaign mode, it could be both a blessing and a curse.
States double down
The weekend brought a flurry of activity. Non-residents from nine countries in southern Africa have been barred from Australia (despite Omicron already being detected in Europe and, as of yesterday, Sydney).
Meanwhile New South Wales and Victoria, which have scrapped hotel quarantine, have introduced more restrictions on international arrivals, introducing a 72-hour isolation period. But already there’s potential for the two states to deviate.
NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet is adamant he will not reintroduce hotel quarantine, impose restrictions or deviate from the COVID-19 roadmap. Victorian chief health officer Professor Brett Sutton conceded that while Omicron was probably impossible to keep out, the state wasn’t back at square one.
But Victoria has always been more risk-averse in its COVID response than NSW, and by last night there were reports of health officials considering an introduction of 14 days’ quarantine for all overseas arrivals, and a return of mandatory masking. And Health Minister Martin Foley insisted Omicron justified the urgent need for the government’s contentious pandemic laws to pass Parliament.
Over in Western Australia, Premier Mark McGowan promised to keep borders to the rest of the country shut for even longer (at least to those who aren’t professional cricketers) if Omicron proved worrying.
“Being cautious works. Being adventurous doesn’t,” he said.
The politics of it
Politically, Omicron has emerged at a challenging time. Both major parties are sharpening their election pitches ahead of a poll due before May next year. The government desperately needs Australians to have a normal summer. Labor hopes to finally release some more policies in the weeks leading up to Christmas.
How Omicron affects election fortunes is a question of “ifs”. If it fizzles, all is good for the government — even if that fizzling comes at the expense of Australians stranded overseas. Even a more serious rise in cases could be an opportunity for Morrison to regain the pandemic halo that has boosted the fortunes of political leaders around the world and has deserted him in recent months. But tightened interstate borders could also make it harder for him to campaign, especially in WA where the Liberals stand to lose seats.
If Morrison mishandles things, it could open up another line of attack for Labor, furnishing its narrative of a Coalition government that made devastating missteps throughout the pandemic. Over the weekend, Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese criticised Morrison for being slow to place restrictions on African countries. He then reiterated old calls for purpose-built quarantine facilities, a line he had abandoned when the end of hotel quarantine made them into white elephants.
But leaning too hard into COVID caution could bring problems for Labor. Morrison’s entire election schtick is to claim credit for freedom. Tainting Labor as the party of restrictions could be a big boost, particularly in lockdown-fatigued NSW, the state most crucial to its election chances.
A lot remains uncertain about the Omicron variant. But as the picture becomes clearer, it could lead to some hasty reframing of both parties’ election strategies.
If it’s true, as stated above, that Albanese believes the end of hotel quarantine made purpose-built quarantine facilities into white elephants, then Albanese is as foolish, useless, misguided and incapable as Morrison on this issue.
Purpose-built quarantine facilities are an asset not just for this but for any epidemic. They are like fire engines. You don’t say fire engines serve no purpose while they are on stand-by. You don’t scrap them because there is no fire for them to tackle today. You don’t wait until there is a fire before you place an order for someone to supply fire engines.
White elephant is a foolish and inaccurate term. Stick to tortured grammar.
The term for a pale pachyderm means “a gift intended to be so expensive to maintain that it is deleterious to the recipient who dare not refuse it from a superior”.
Depending upon whom one considers which it sounds like our current Reign of Misrule.
That seems to be an American usage. The more familiar one is
something that has cost a lot of money but has no useful purpose – Cambridge Dictionary.
Unlikely amerikan – the term arose before the New World had even been discovered when Siamese kings would exercise their sovereignty by gifting a rare albino elephant to some restive satrap who was growing too big for his boot…er, sandals on pain of retribition if it did not thrive.
Very subtle, those mediaeval Asians.
I’m talking about its use in current English.
Ah yes, ‘common usage‘.
The Pit into which meaning disappears.
Is that not more or less what Scummo, Fraudie et al did when cutting funding to rural fire brigades which mostly rely upon volunteer expertise?
Never forget which government shutdown the dedicated quarantine facilities such as North Head which had protected the nation so well for a century and half from infected sea arrivals.
Judging from his posts on Facebook and Twitter, I have seen no change in Albanese’s support for purpose built quarantine facilities. Unless I hear him say it, in as many words, then I’ll just put it down to the MSM desperately trying to create an anti-Labor narrative.
that’s not how I read the white elephant reference. That seems to be all Napier-Raman’s work.
Which shows the peril of using words & phrases which the ‘writer’ does not understand – so common here as to be the norm.
I hope you are right, I really do. It would be reasonable for Albanese, as a matter of election tactics, to ease up on demanding quarantine facilities on the grounds there are other issues that get a better public reaction which he should give priority, although he has not shifted position on quarantine. If that’s the case, Napier-Raman has traduced Albanese and owes him an apology, or at least a clarification.
“…. A case in point: for months, Labor’s go-to line was about how Morrison flunked his “two jobs” — the vaccine rollout and hotel quarantine. Now that the vaccine rollout is on its victory lap, and hotel quarantine looks like a white elephant, the opposition is changing its tune to avoid being wedged as dismal COVID pessimists…”
The original, from which the term was lifted, was a term used by the author (not Albanese) – as it is again.
I agree with your comment. It could also be interpreted as the ‘quarantine hotels’ now being white elephants!
It is all Napier-Raman’s work. As it was in his own linked article in Crikey of the 3 November:
https://uat.crikey.com.au/2021/11/03/anthony-albanese-voters-dont-know-what-he-stands-for/
I don’t know how one could possibly interpret the reference in today’s article as implying Albo used or endorsed the term, which is well understood to mean something inordinately expensive that ends up being unfit for purpose or of no need once acquired or built.
Albo (doing a pretty good job) on 7:30 tonight said that the Omicron variant has ‘once again shown that we should have had in place purpose-built quarantine by now. The idea that we would return to hotel quarantine when it’s been responsible for more than 20 breaches that have had real consequences for the economy, it shows as failure to have that foresight’.
Kishor is I think referring to hotel quarantine being a white elephant, as he has done in a previous article, not purpose-built quarantine facilities which, as you say, are long term assets that need to be built now. Albanese would do well to include these in any policy announcement.
There’s enough ambiguity in the sentence to make your interpetation possible, but it does not make much sense. Hotel quarantine, when it ends, simply leaves an empty hotel that can return to commercial use. That does not match the white elephant metaphor in any way. A purpose-built quarantine facility in contrast has no commercial potential, costs money to build and so long as it is not in use just costs more money. When it is in use it gets even more costly, (but in theory some or all of that cost can be recovered if those being quarantined are made to pay). So it could be seen as a white elephant by anyone who regards the facility as useless.
as civid 19 in one form or another will be around for a time then it would be best to have purpose-built quarantine facilities in each state for over seas visitors even if it is for a min of 72 hours, we do it for most things coming into the country so why not, also it would help in illegal immigration ect as better checks could be done.
Ahh yes, but that would mean caps on #s of travellers which is very inconvenient for Qantas and businesses who make $$$$$$$$$$ from bringing in lots and lots and lots of warm bods.
Surely Morrison should get marked down because he is having to change tack from his latest ‘govt getting out of our faces’, and anti mandate stuff.
Well might Mo**ison feel fearful of the Emacron variant. I don’t think, I know…
Kishor, all interesting speculation. But, really, do elections have to be about such inane ‘messaging’? Surely enough people have clocked the Liar from the Shire to not believe anything he says, even if the stenographers in the media report his blustering bullsh*t uncritically.