On Friday, NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet unilaterally fired a cannonball at Fortress Australia, announcing an end to all quarantine restrictions on vaccinated travellers entering the state from November 1. NSW, Perrottet said, was opening up to the world.
It’s hugely telling that such a seismic shift in Australia’s COVID response didn’t come from Scott Morrison. At a press conference that afternoon, the PM tried to claw back control. Most foreigners, holiday-makers, and international students wouldn’t be allowed in just yet. The feds still control visas.
“They are decisions for the Commonwealth government, as the premier and I know,” he told reporters at Kirribilli House.
Despite that rebuke to Perrottet, the whole moment was a sign of just how much Morrison’s authority over managing the next phase of the pandemic had eroded, as NSW made a clear diversion from the national plan.
States going their own way
Before COVID, most Australians probably didn’t think too much about what living in a federation actually meant, beyond State of Origin and those weird, parochial debates about potato cakes/scallops. Now, Annastacia Palaszczuk gets to decide whether you’ll be able to see your family for Christmas. And while Morrison occasionally fumes about this, there’s little he can do to force the hand of Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory. Constitutionally, that’s what living in a federation means. Politically, there are important seats in all those states, and people there tend to like not having COVID around.
The sidelining of Morrison began during those chaotic weeks in March last year, when the pandemic suddenly started to get very real. Over a weekend, Dan Andrews and Gladys Berejiklian had to drag Morrison toward going harder and faster to stop the spread of the virus, pressuring him in a WhatsApp group before briefing gallery journalists on their plans for state-wide shut-downs before the prime minister got up to speak.
Looking back, despite Morrison later announcing national restrictions and economic support packages, that was the moment premiers took control. Soon after, states were starting to slam their borders shut to the rest of the country, a situation unheard of since the Spanish Flu more than a century ago.
“We’ve got a moat and we’re not afraid to use it,” the front page of The Mercury roared, when Tasmania cut itself off from the country. At the time, it seemed shocking. Now, it’s Perrottet’s decision to allow people in without quarantine that causes surprise.
What is also surprising is that NSW and Victoria, the country’s two biggest states, didn’t close their border until July last year. But since then, states have become far more reliant on border lockouts as an early line of pandemic defence, with often absurd results. Victoria’s traffic light permit system (introduced only in December) means that until the state exits lockdown on Thursday, a Sydneysider could drive to Melbourne before a Melburnian could travel 15km across the city. Last week Queensland closed its border to Tasmania over a single COVID case, and anyone coming in will need to do hotel quarantine.
Most absurd is the NSW-ACT border. As it stands, Canberrans can enter anywhere in regional NSW, except Greater Sydney. But if they travel further than a specific set of approved postcodes (which the territory government expanded, reluctantly, on the weekend), they will have to apply for a special exemption, and quarantine.
And all of this comes at a cost of family separations, children denied vital medical procedures, and a sense this is all a discomfiting new normal.
How long will it last?
The increasing reliance on internal border restrictions, a uniquely Australian response to the pandemic, is largely thanks to two things. The first is that there’s been a starkly different experience of COVID in different states. Thanks to WA’s geographic isolation, and Queensland’s dumb luck, people in both states have lived very free lives. When borders reopen — even McGowan and Palaszczuk are incrementally changing their messaging to grapple with this reality — those lives will start to become less free.
The second is the High Court’s ruling last November, where it unanimously rejected a constitutional challenge to WA’s border restrictions brought by Clive Palmer. That’s pretty good authority that as long as the virus is around, and our vaccination rates are what they are, border restrictions are valid.
But the incredible reliance on them, and the way locking out the country has turned relatively mediocre premiers into rockstars, makes them an incredibly tempting tool in a state government’s arsenal even beyond COVID. Earlier this year McGowan hinted at maintaining restrictions to stop the meth trade. The only way to really tear down the restrictions is through the courts. But Palmer first brought his case in July last year, and the High Court’s delivered its ruling in November, with full judgment released in February. There’s a time-lag here that means borders could theoretically be slammed shut in the short-term.
Perrottet’s announcement on Friday infuriated Queensland’s government, which accused him of abandoning the national plan. But long before Morrison announced it, we knew just how powerful premiers could be. It’ll be hard getting them to relinquish that power.
It’s not hard to see why premiers have more power than the PM. For a start, they all come out with plans that they try to implement, whereas all what one hears from the PM are marketing pronouncements, or hiring of private advisors to deal with issues, or shutting down debate. After three years of watching the PM I still don’t know what he stands for. Does he actually think and canvass ideas about how to improve the nation or is he always being directed by someone else to do their bidding? He seems very at ease with transferring wealth from the average tax-paying Australian to the super wealthy and is very comfortable with increased corruption in his ranks. And the fact that Joyce can run rings around him shows that he’s not particularly smart either. But just like Trump was a symptom, rather than the cause of America’s woes, Morisson is a symptom of what Australia has become.
Hear hear well spoken diana,
Well-said. When Morrison said ‘ I don’t hold a hose mate’, he was obviously talking about his view of his role more generally. He seems to be an empty vessel who talks in marketing cliches, inckudibg about his religious beliefs. . I have never heard him demonstrate that he has thought deeply about anything.
Indeed. Morrison may seek power, but he is lazy. He always felt that he could keep the power without having to lift a finger. But crises such as massive bushfires and once-in-a-century pandemics have shone a light on how ineffective Morrison actually is, and how reluctant he is to hold any kind of hose, literal or metaphorical.
An empty vessel who, lacking a spine, needs to be carried around in a bucket.
Morrison the ’empty vessel who talks in marketing cliches’ is becoming more desperate and more ‘shouty’ whenever his authority is being challenged. Not quite as outspoken or inflammatory as the pastor / politician Rev Ian Paisley but Morrison is heading that way.
The internal borders aren’t really the issue are they! Comments like geographic isolation and dumb luck are really a sideshow. It all comes down to vaccination levels and always has done. The borders will come down in time when the states have all achieved a decent vaccination level. That is actually the agreed plan. They are getting there however they are coming from a back marker position because of uneven vaccination distribution from Canberra. NSW received vastly more than there share of vaccines as a percentage of population from June to August.
The issue is Morrison’s leadership rather than the Premiers power. His natural instinct is to divide, politicize and to not take ownership. And so it is that at every opportunity he seeks to divide National Cabinet, front run announcements, play favorites with vaccine distribution and financial support whilst relentlessly criticizing and undermining Labor run states with Newscorp running his defense. Australian needs their PM to look more like “Cometh the day cometh the man” rather than ” I don’t hold a hose mate”
Premiers have no option but to hold their line because they know that Morrison is not in the trenches with them.
Its all about the polls and the next election for Morrison. He must reverse the polling swing to Labor and the ‘voices for’ independents in Qld and Vic whilst holding the line in NSW. That guides everything..Gold Standard, Dictator Dan, Cave WA and Qld. etc. Everything Morrison does is guided by these imperatives.
However the absolute central issues is vaccine roll out…Morrison’s responsibility and failure…everything else is really secondary.
Indeed. Senator Katy Gallagher fluffed her response when asked on Insiders yesterday by the Cassidy-cosplaying caricature in Barrie’s chair about the $300 vaccination plan. She should have said that Labor had been misled by statements about surveys about vaccine hesitancy when in fact subsequent statistics are showing Australians are very willing to get vaccinated, and it has become very clear that the problem all along was vaccine availability, because Morrison and Hunt were asleep and Frydenberg didn’t want to pay for the vaccines.
‘Why would they [premiers] want to give it up?” Would we want them to give it up?
In a word “no”. His attitude from “not holding a hose, mate” to the hapless plight of those in aged care and to quarantine which had to be taken over by the states, to the total stuff-up with the vaccine procurement and rollout makes state responsibility much more acceptable.
I’m very glad that the premier of my state has more power than the PM. The PM is an incompetent lazy fool who doesn’t give a rat’s arse about people. Mark McGowan has stepped up to keep borders closed to protect us.
Can Qld, WA, SA, Tas & NT commit to a set schedule?
Why not, in the circumstances? I want recognition for the suggestion (a knighthood?).
As Xmas is such a big issue, how about a slightly more practical date, say 10th Dec?
If nobody likes this plan, that is proof of it’s fairness! Yippee!!!