Josh Frydenberg has been busy. Yesterday the treasurer did nine media appearances, making it a grand total of 24 over the last week.
Each time, Frydenberg returned to the same soundbite: if not at 70 or 80% vaccinated, when?
“If we don’t open up at 70, 80%, [insert name of host], when do we open up? When do kids go back to school? When do businesses reopen? When will we be able to go and celebrate weddings or attend funerals of loved ones? When do we move freely in our own country? People need hope, and the plan is that hope.”
At a press conference this morning, Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who has returned to that rhetorical question several times, heralded “another day of hope”.
Expect to hear this a lot more. It’s the clearest sign that after months of floundering, the Coalition has sharpened its messaging and is ready for the polls. With most of the country stuck in lockdowns that are, in large part, a result of the federal government’s shocking failures on the vaccine rollout, the promise of freedom is the strongest electoral asset the Coalition has left.
As we wrote this week, a manufactured political battle between freedom and lockdowns is a cynical bit of framing on the part of the government. But it might well work.
Firstly, the electorate is getting pretty sick and tired of lockdowns and want them to end once the Doherty modelling targets are lifted. Two polls published this week suggest as much.
Given that, it makes sense to paint Labor as the party of lockdowns. By posing a rhetorical question — if not at 70-80%, when? — it shifts the burden onto Anthony Albanese to tell us when he would open up.
Crucially, the federal opposition have said several times that they support the targets in the Doherty report. But what Labor actually supports doesn’t really matter. All the government needs to do is create a perception they don’t back the plan and want to keep you in lockdown forever, just like they created a (false) perception that Labor wanted to tax retirees into poverty and put all miners on the dole in 2019.
Combine this message with doubts about reopening posed by Queensland and Western Australian premiers, and there’s enough to give the narrative legs.
Secondly, the government’s aggressive new framing draws a sharper contrast with Labor. For the last few months, as the government seemed lost, Labor have repeated, ad nauseum, the line that Scott Morrison had two jobs: the vaccine rollout and fixing hotel quarantine.
This is Morrison and Frydenberg’s attempt to neutralise that backward-looking message (notably, the prime minister finally lost it at Labor’s “two jobs” line in question time this week).
While the government talks about an end to lockdowns and a normal future, Labor are still asking why there are no desert quarantine camps. Now that there’s a genuine sense the rollout is finally hitting its stride (no credit to Morrison for this), the government is banking on people looking to the future, instead of a past where they couldn’t be bothered diversifying vaccine supply.
Will the voters really buy it? On one hand, hope is a pretty potent and compelling thing right now. On the other, it’s only potent and compelling because the Morrison government’s colossal botching of the vaccine rollout put us here in the first place. Nobody should count on the electorate remembering this. It took just a few weeks of Morrison cosplaying as a regular suburban dad for voters to forget six years of dysfunction in Canberra.
Still, there’s another problem with hope. At some point, the future arrives, and those hopes can be crushed. The reality is the next six months will be incredibly messy. We don’t know whether the hot-vaxxed summer the government is relying on will be accompanied by devastation in our hospitals. We don’t know how long state premiers will continue to chart their own course and keep borders shut. We don’t know just how badly this will affect kids.
If the future could get worse, it makes sense to hammer a message of hope. And if you’re feeling hopeful, maybe you head to the polls before that hope can turn to dust.
A couple of points about this: The Herald/Age pollster frames questions with an obvious bias to the LNP; the results are meaningless.
Second and more importantly: No PM has had less control over events than the current PM, thanks largely to his own negligence. Decisions re lockdowns, borders etc are out of his hands (and Albos) so we will have the ludicrous situation of an LNP election campaign being directed primarily against some of the Premiers but not all. Blaming Albo for WA and Qld’s borders is a non-starter even for the great liar and News Corp. And that’s before you even wonder how the virus will be behaving…
Talking about meaninglessness…..your comment?
Is that you, Scomo?
It is one of his staffers and they are cross eyed because they didn;t get a freebie to Cornwall.
Nah it’s not, but seriously “wondering now the virus will be behaving ”
Sorry I was a bit testy.
What is great with you being able to post contemptible drivel, is that we all get to see the mind of the Coalition at work; the lurid mindset of those who are screaming live with covid as instructed by Morrisin and Berjikliakn.
“We need to learn to live with covid” – Scotty speak for “We have given up”. Politicising lockdown and mask mandates so those options became last resort (instead of first) failures in quarantine and in mismanagement of the roll out.
Meaningless is what all of your posts are, and that is because you insist on chanting the Morriscum line and the Berjiklian bulldust. Little parrot. Your despicable Coalition are now in the process of committing genocide on first nation people.
“NSW [Coalition] politicians ignored warnings and pleas for help for 18 months. Then they blame those who have been so badly let down
FACT: On 13 August when the funeral in Wilcannia occurred, there were no restrictions in place that would have prevented such a gathering in regional NSW, and no public health orders by which police or the people of Wilcannia could have prevented others from entering the town from other parts of NSW.
FACT: The virus was not, as Hazzard claimed, “spread from Wilcannia to other parts of the state”. Covid was brought to Wilcannia from somewhere else in NSW as a direct result of the Berejiklian government’s failure to adequately contain the virus in the regions by restricting movement earlier.
FACT: Far from being “selfish”, the people of Wilcannia have been heroic in their attempts to care for each other, with little or no help from government slouches who were warned 18 months ago – by non-government agencies such as Maari Ma Health Aboriginal Corporation and the people of Wilcannia – that disaster was on its way”….Cherie von Horshner for The Guardian Australia
…a fool could have foreseen this disaster before the pandemic even began…when the very people who’ve allowed this disaster to happen point the finger of blame at the victims of their failures, it’s incompetence at best. But in all reality, it’s probably something worse.
Morrison can peddle his hope message as rigorously as he chooses but voters in states with fast lockdowns (WA, SA, Qld, TAS) feel comparatively safe with the status quo.
The only hope Morrison could sell me is the hope that he’s soundly defeated at the next federal election.
The 70% of Australians in Victoria and New South Wales would disagree. Bully for WA and SA and TAS though, they are but warts on the pigs area when it comes to Australia.
Dammed auto correct…pigs area is pigs arse!
Righto, so VIC, ACT and NZ are in their current situation because they didn’t lock down fast enough?
Agree, we could all be put into cryogenic suspension right now and without vaccination we’d all catch covid. It would be better than being locked in our homes while still conscious though.
Like Ripley being ovipositted before going into cold sleep.
Their long term electoral strategy has been to attack Victoria, the government and Premier via NewsCorp (and 9F/7WM). to then watch the Vic. Premier’s ratings rise (inc. amongst Lib voters) versus an invisible Liberal Party; me thinks this time, though dependent on media, the east suburban Liberal wives etc. will really have their baseball bats out (one guesses there has been a long term drift away from the Libs in Vic).
Further, who in Melbourne or Victoria would want to be like NSW, which has become Australia’s evangelical Christian nativist conservative capital along with the LNP replacing the former ‘jewel in the crown’, Victoria, with QLD for coalition support.
Good evaluation of NSW.
Victoria is a basket case. The city is ghoul-town, barricaded shops and empty street, meanwhile I’m sure a limo picks up Dan Andrews every day with fresh refreshments in the back fridge.
“Victoria is a basket case. The city is ghoul-town, barricaded shops and empty street…”
So what? Why pick on Victoria (which is not a city, but again, so what?). Your description also applies to almost every other town and city in every state of Australia, not to mention Europe or North America. The commercial centres of urban life are dead or dying wherever you look. Dan Andrews is obviously wonderful and has great powers but this level of world-wide carnage is well out of his league.
Time for those meds you refuse to take
We don’t know whether the hot-vaxxed summer the government is relying on will be accompanied by devastation in our hospitals. I think we DO know this and there are global examples out there that demonstrate what happens when you “open up”. Its gonna be a bloodbath…
Never open up then? What sort of world would suit you, beth?
One where we get 90 to 95 % of the entire population fully vaccinated before we open the floodgates. Blind Freddy can see that…listen to Norman Swan.
That Norman Swann guy is not a medical doctor.
When you use words like “floodgates” you’re begging the question
He is a medical doctor, though.
Who was into it so much he quit 29 years ago. He probably doesn’t even remember how an aspirin works.
Stop talking rubbish. I have been listening to the medical report on the ABC for a few years now and am impressed by his knowledge. You, on the other hand, do not sound very knowledgeable. If anyone should STFU it is you.
Ohhh, you’re impressed. He must be a genius then.
Did you edit that Wikipedia entry?
Norman Swan is a fully trained and qualified doctor who was married to a paedatrician.
He has spent so much time attending conferences and reporting whilst researching different infectious diseases and epidemiology that he has probably qualified as a physician and he does TY appearances.
Yes we actually do need 90 to 95% vaccination rate with boosters to the vaccinations at a maximum of 6 months because we simply do not have the ICU beds to look after the patients who will get critically ill from Covid19 infections.
Compare this, Florida opened up at about 70% vaccination rate and it has 1 bed for every 3,500 population. Ever since opening up from Covid restrictions the ICU’s are bed blocked.
Australia only has 1 ICU beds for every 9,500 of its population.
Tell me again how safe it is to open up at 70% vaccination rate?
Safe enough for it to be recommended by the Doherty institute. I’d actually argue for 50% but I’m not an expert.
You’ll always find a stat that can be twisted to support your fears.
I could find a thousand stats to support 30% probably but can’t be arsed.
Not so much editted as rewrote, just like Moloch’s minions rewrite government handouts, tendentious mendacity.
Why do you think it is 70% of the population like Florida? It’ 70% of the eligible* population, or about 55% of the actual population.
NSW’s daily cases dwarf Victoria’s winter-spring outbreak last year that saw Melbourne shut down for 14 weeks, There are now more than 13,000 active local COVID cases recorded across NSW, that’s only the ones they know about!
Genies out of the bottle isnt it? Not gonna go back in.
Not Aladdin’s Lamp, more Pandora’s Box from which the plague has been unleashed.
Only Hope remains.
It’s not about cases anymore.
Parrots the parrot
Katharine Murphy in The Guardian writes of your handlers:
But Berejiklian didn’t try hard enough.
That’s the truth.
It’s galling then, to tune in every day at 11am to watch the NSW premier reframing her abject failure as an act of courageous leadership.
Berejiklian presents herself as a pace-setter, the only premier with the bottle to speak unvarnished truths, like the elimination of community transmission is impossible (unlike those panicky Labor premiers with their fingers wedged in the Delta dyke).
Given she failed to try hard enough, and given her failure now sets the baseline for the rest of the federation, Berejiklian could at least spare us the self-serving piety. But please know she doesn’t spare us. On Thursday, NSW surpassed 1,000 cases a day, and chief health officer Kerry Chant predicted more bad news would come.
As Berejiklian confirmed the new daily record, she softened the blow by promising people a pinic. ..[but ] by the end of Thursday we learned that Wilcannia had a higher transmission rate than the worst hotspots in Sydney – and no ventilators
.as NSW passes a milestone of 1,000 daily cases, we have the “safe” plan to transition to Covid-normal.
So let me repeat, nothing here is “safe”.
The prime minister has made a number of very poor judgments this year.
He shouldn’t compound bad judgments by peddling false comforts.
As Robert posted:
698 hospitalisations is more than Victoria had at any stage of the big outbreak last year (peak was 675 on 19th of August 2020, two weeks after case peak). 116 people in ICU is close to triple Victoria’s peak of 45 people in ICU. Lower rates, but that matters a lot less if you have sky rocketing cases. Worse to come even if today happens to be the peak in cases.
And it will get worse with the idiot in charge Berjiklian boasting restrictions to ease for the fully vaccinated, which does not stop transmission to either the vaccinated or them passing it on to others. It’s the freedom to let it rip, to live with covid and to forget lockdown. Bring on the refrigerated meat trucks.
Tragically 133 deaths in NSW as of right now.
If they have 700 more they will have as many as Victoria, where it ripped in 2020.
Thankfully the vast improvements are a result of increasing vaccination numbers and the situation will get even better.
The only thing we DO know is that human beings cannot exist in lockdowns in perpetuity.
The Right show no aversion to mental, moral & ethical lockdown in a 18/9thC laissez-faire fantasy, as you constantly demonstrate.
News Flash – society has evolved significantly since then which is why you lot are howling at the Moon.
Stop waffling about left and right, it’s so 70s.
Nobody gives a toss anymore except old relics.
Can’t quarantine stranded Aussies. Can quarantine farm slaves.
In the ultimate insult, our governments have established special subsidised quarantine arrangements for migrant fruit pickers.
Other states have ongoing arrangements for growers to apply to bring in Pacific workers contracted to work in their farms.
Meanwhile, the Morrison Governments new agricultural visa will allow regional businesses to import indentured migrant labour from 1o South East Asian nations, with these workers qualifying for permanent residency if they commit to working for three years:
Having stranded Australians return to their own country is clearly less important to our governments than providing farms with cheap migrant labour, subsidised by the taxpayer.
Why aren’t these quarantine facilities being used to house actual Australians desperate to return home?
Why aren’t actual Australians being given priority?
And why are returning Australians being forced to wear the full costs of their quarantine when taxpayers are subsiding the costs of migrant fruit pickers?
Quarantine facilities and flights should be used first and foremost to return stranded Australians.
When foreign fruit pickers carry more political weight than returning Australians, you know our governments have lost their moral compass…Macrobusiness
I totally agree. No good starving to death though. We need to open our borders as soon as we hit the agreed upon vaccination numbers so that we can pick our own fruit, grow and harvest our own food and return Aussies to their homeland.
Especially as the Doherty Institute did say that if we open up at 70% that the track and trace and isolate are critical to staying open. The tracking and tracing unit of NSW is gold standard and overwhelmed by these current case numbers.
“Now that there’s a genuine sense the rollout is finally hitting its stride (no credit to Morrison for this)”
Maybe the author only means “Morrison deserves no credit”, which is evidently true. But political reality is (a) the rollout is hitting its stride, and (b) Morrison is currently the PM. There is irrefutable evidence from electorate all over the world that no matter how illogical or undeserved it may be the government gets the credit or blame for anything that is currently happening. This even includes, for example, the weather on election day – the incumbent government benefits from good weather or suffers if the weather is bad. Also, look at how Johnson in the UK presided over a catastrophic handling of the epidemic there but still managed to boost his popularity by making a big song and dance about his “freedom day”. The electorate has the five-minute memory of the apocryphal gold fish. The Morrison gang will have noticed Johnson’s tactics.
“The electorate has the five-minute memory of the apocryphal gold fish.”
As you say, apocryphal. I understand that goldfish can remember up to 5 months, which is longer than some sections of the electorate apparently.
The implication being we might have more successful elections if the franchise was transferred from the current electorate to our estimable population of gold fish. And why not? It could hardly result in a worse selection of representatives.
There is a Clark and Dawes on U Tube called the elections have been outsourced.
‘The Morrison gang will have noticed Johnson’s tactics.’
Aren’t the same people running both gigs?
Good point. Both the UK Tories and the AU Libs are advised by Lynton Crosby, and both may be regarded as political franchises within Rupert Murdoch’s empire.
Agree, imported from the US GOP eco-system whereby Abbott can be found…..
Crosby Textor have done election campaigns often for the Tories, with Murdoch and others, especially tabloid media in support (with anodyne BBC like the ABC), nominal independent actors like Farage to do nativism aka Hanson, obsess about immigration/population growth, Koch Think corporate and ideological tanks promoting ‘radical right libertarianism’ (Brexit/Trump) e.g. IEA (equivalent of the IPA) and a battalion of nativist libertarian Tory MPs (related to all the previous) to pressure their own government (like the NP here?).
Result is ‘owned’ government, unfit for purpose or incompetent, but supported by ageing electoral rolls in regions etc.
While I agree with most of your comment, however, As an ageing elector in the regions, I resent the premise of your statement … never voted anything but Labor and Green, same for many of my acquaintances. Just saying – that’s the problem with generalisations.
I am massively disappointed in the performance of the current “opposition”. Why does Labor keep supporting government bills? I want opposition that has justice, fairness & kindness as its core principles.
Bully for you but I would not take this personally, as it was not directed at you in particular but the broader terms of ‘electorate’, demographics and majority of ageing conservative voters (many formerly Labor voters).
Of course there are older Green and Labor voters but polling and research, globally and locally, shows that ageing voters tend to vote conservative and are often nudged to do so aka dog whistling*, even if not traditional conservative voters.
In Europe it is known as ‘pensioner populism’ whereby in regions pensioners are catered to while proportionally fewer working age are thrown under the bus e.g. few if any unemployment benefits, fewer work/education opportunities, voter suppression etc. versus bonus pension payments, free transport, subsidised utilities etc. for pensioners.
*Recently kicked off again in Central Europe, especially Hungary and Poland, with the spectre of refugees from Afghanistan and the Taliban with the ‘great replacement’ and/or Soros conspiracy targeting ‘immigrants’ yet in reality many regional communities suffering demographic decline due to emigration of working age…..
Am I the only one who thinks the 70-80 percent vaccination rate is such a blunt instrument? Surely vulnerable communities such as the elderly, the disabled and indigenous need better protections before we open up? They will be devastated by the virus on their current vaccination rates even when the rest of the country averages 70-80!
All thoughts of subjective scenarios are possible, mere supposition cannot be allowed to keep a populace locked in their homes.
OK, we get Beware of the Covidophilles.
We can’t help you with your demands for freedom.
Please consider this lyric and contemplate why the rest of us are committed to our society’s survival and sucess,
:”Freedom’s just another word for, nothing left to lose”
Ratty, I am equally committed to that.
I believe we are currently destroying our society and I really do understand the implications of an out of control covid. I firmly believe it will not be out of control.
Remember in that song there’s a line where she’s holding “Bobbies hand in mine”?
Well that’s not possible for many in lockdown. Would her and Bobby McGee even meet? Would they be travelling anywhere? The basis of that song is destroyed in lockdown.
Respectfully BTC, I really doubt that you understand the implications of an out of control Covid. This will not release people from lockdown, it will just spread the lockdown to all of Australia (the whole of Australia outside of NSW and Vic is basically free now).
That lockdown might be a personal choice, or it might be because you have a medical condition that means Covid is a likely death sentence, or it might be because you have one of a thousand other health conditions that you won’t be able to have attended to because the hospitals are full and the staff are exhausted. You’ve just swapped lockdown from the relatively healthy to the weak, the poor, the old and the infirm.
I get it, Darwinian survival of the fittest, which I’m sure you don’t understand. Meanwhile Covid is overwhelming society and brewing up a new batch of variants for local conditions.
You argue as though lockdown is a forever condition, that’s your straw man. We’re all gonna be locked down for another 6 to 8 weeks, extending that to Xmas to attain close to 90% vaccination would make all the difference.
Nobody is saying the lockdown is sustainable, but lockdown for a few more months definitely is. I’m sorry if you are finding yourself taxed by these difficult circumstances, but pucker up big fella, and do something for someone other than yourself. Toughen up.
Thank you for the calm voice of reason.
NSW recorded 1,034 locally acquired cases and two deaths. There are 778 people in hospital with Covid-19 in NSW.NSW has had over 17,000 people infected with covid and that’s only the ones that have been tested,, you can double or triple that number.
Foley said that Victoria would expect to receive its fair share of any new vaccine supply dished out by the federal government, saying the “thing that’s holding us back is supply”.
“And if the commonwealth’s got more supply, or if they’re talking to others about more supply, the sooner they share that with us the sooner we get that out to Victorians.”
And unvaccinated kids. Watching our kids and grandkids suffocating to death in paediatric ICU beds would be a horrible price to pay for Scummo’s re-election.
I take it then that you did not watch the Covid kids in India, and the permanent damage commonly referred to as “Long Covid”.
Yes I saw it all and thought it was horrible. It doesn’t change my position.
Impervious to ethics, reason or morality.
No, basically a realist. I’d say reason is on my side, nobody wants anyone to die, Tragically they will, and we need to choose the lesser of two evils.
Not a great place to be, but here we are.
If you say so – I choose you, as the evil of many lessers, to die.
Happy to take my chances.
The country’s worst-affected state, NSW, has now administered 6.2 million vaccines. On a grim day where the state broke the 1000-case mark, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian revealed her treat for the vaccinated only: a picnic. Those living inside Sydney’s 12 hotspots can get together outside (locally) from mid-September, while outside the hotspots, groups of five can get together within 5km of everyone’s home mid-September
Happy to see you unmasked and at the next protest demanding your freedom to kill others
And happy to chance my little grand-daughter’s life. Thanks mate. Very reasonable of you.