PM sidesteps lockdowns as he looks to next election

It should be much easier in a country where 87 per cent of the population aged 16 and over are now fully vaccinated. After all, vaccination is supposed to be the answer to living with COVID-19. Booster doses are available to provide an extra guarantee, even if Australia will be late to accelerate this process due to the usual delays in assessing risks and benefits.

Yet there’s no escaping the global uncertainty and community apprehension about what this means in a country only just recovering from protracted lockdowns in its two most-populated states.

So Scott Morrison is keen to insist Australia is merely instituting a “sensible” pause in this week’s planned opening of its international borders to international students and skilled workers, as well as a new travel bubble with Japan and South Korea.

“We do not want to take a decision about the next step until, with further information, we know that we’re not going back to lockdowns,” he said. “None of us want that. None of us want to go back to those long quarantines and all of those sorts of issues.

“We’re going to keep moving forward into Christmas and in 2022, and we’re going to open safely, and we’re going to stay safely open.”

The business community also supports the government measures as sensible – particularly given the alternative of more closed internal borders or, worse, state governments resorting to more lockdowns.

Lockdowns have already become a far less likely option given exhausted community tolerance for such drastic measures after nearly two years battling the pandemic. Even Victoria’s Dan Andrews has definitely gotten the message. State border closures, though, are still an obvious potential threat.

And as the two-week “pause” on international arrivals suggests, Morrison is not about to test popular sentiment on the virtues of trying to keep omicron out – even if this is not really possible.

NSW has already had at least one case of omicron moving around in the community, for example. There will inevitably be many more, and probably soon. The only alternative would be a futile attempt to return all of Australia to the closed, pre-vaccinated, zero-COVID-19 status it previously tried – and failed – to achieve.

But briefly shutting national borders to certain visa holders and requiring returning Australians to self-isolate for three days is more like a down-payment on community trust. The Morrison government is not about to risk public safety.

It still seemed excessively optimistic of the Prime Minister to describe yesterday’s meeting of national cabinet as ensuring the federal and state governments are “all on the same page”.

The only same page is a looming federal election, ensuring state Labor governments are just as aware as Morrison of the urgent need to frame the political narrative over the next few months.

For the Morrison government, that means selling the idea of a strong economy and booming jobs market offering Australians a bright future. Today’s release of the national accounts for the September quarter will demonstrate the devastating economic impact of lockdowns in NSW and Victoria.

Yet the major problem for employers now is the lack of workers – just when people are ready to spend household savings accumulated over COVID-19. Many bars and restaurants are limiting hours or space because they can’t get enough staff. A jobs sign in a Victorian coffee shop window puts it succinctly: “Students, their parents and their grandparents wanted – no, we are not joking”.

The new restrictions on international students coming to Australia will delay any quick assistance from that quarter in the lead-up to Christmas. But an excessively tight labour market will also make it harder for Labor’s attacks on casualised jobs and wages growth to register.

It bolsters Morrison’s confidence in economic management remaining a government strong suit, despite the indefinite disappearance of any pretensions to a budget surplus.

Assuming the budget is delivered as scheduled on March 29 next year, it will feature plenty of election reminder notes about this. That will probably include a further extension of temporary and targeted tax breaks for those on lower and middle incomes.

And despite backbench nerves and the viciously vengeful mood in the last parliament, Morrison believes most voters will be looking ahead rather than back at problems such as the delay in securing enough mRNA vaccines like Pfizer.

Anthony Albanese has still been hard for Morrison to negatively define because of his refusal to detail many of Labor policies until “kicking with the wind in the last quarter”.

That’s about to change. It will be a brutal match-up right through to election day.