Matthew Abraham: What if Steven Marshall had listened to Nicola Spurrier

Was our Omicron mess inevitable or should Marshall have heeded Spurrier’s “most risk averse” advice? The answer could end his government, writes Matthew Abraham.

South Australia, the land that Covid almost forgot.

I’m not sure if this will fly as our new number plate slogan. Too wordy.

For most of the last 22 largely Covid-free months, it has felt as if SA really was the land that Covid forgot. Now it’s biting us on the bum with a vengeance.

How about “SA, the What If State”? Short and snappy. Let’s run it up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes.

The “What If?” question is the big question. How South Australians answer it will decide the outcome of the March 19 state election. Everything else – jobs, the economy, stadiums, car races – will be a sideshow. It’s the question that’s been hovering over our heads, like a silent drone, from the day the COIVID transition committee decided to open the state’s borders to the virus, ignoring the advice of its pivotal member, Chief Public Health Officer Professor Nicola Spurrier.

Professor Spurrier, ever the trooper, says we shouldn’t ask “What If?” but let’s do what the rest of the Covid brains trust did and ignore her advice.

Professor Nicola Spurrier. Picture: Emma Brasier

What if we’d kept our borders closed, at least until all the little kids were safely double vaccinated and back at school?

What if we’d known the AstraZeneca vaccine was pretty useless against the Omicron variant? What if we’d then waited until all the grown-ups had a chance to book and get their Pfizer or Moderna booster shots? What if we’d observed the mad scramble in the Covid-rich eastern states to get their hands on RATs – Rapid Antigen Tests – to handle the workforce carnage from Omicron infections? What if we’d then used the breathing space to cram whole warehouses with RATs?

These questions aren’t hard. We all know the answers. They’re staring back at us from the empty supermarket meat shelves, the anxious parents trying to prepare children for the weird “hybrid” return to school, the Covid-positive abattoir workers having to work while wearing yellow hairnets to identify their disease status, the elderly marooned without visitors in nursing homes, the nurses and doctors in hospitals under siege.

If you need any more clues, just look across the vast Nullarbor to Western Australia, mocked as a hermit kingdom for keeping its borders sealed. Looks pretty good to me.

If we’d kept our borders shut, would we better off, or worse off, as a community than we are now? Apart from precious family reunions – and these aren’t to be dismissed lightly – it’s hard to think of a single positive from the decision to open our borders.

If the premier, or his CEO, former banker Nick Reade, or his Police Commissioner Grant Stevens, now recovered from COVID-19, can rattle off a few, that’d be appreciated.

Last Monday, Deloitte Access Economics gave them a leg up, reporting that SA’s “excellent run through Covid continues”, we had successfully weathered the storm from opening our borders and now had the opportunity to “bake in” the windfall of the last two years. It said the recent rise in cases should come as no surprise given the infectiousness of the new variant however the numbers were “denting the confidence of a state that’s been essentially Covid-free until now”. No kidding?

“Locals are therefore hesitant from getting out and about with cases in the community,” Deloitte says. “The current period of adjustment is one to watch.”

The “current period of adjustment” is one way of putting it. Or you could simply call it the current mess.

South Australian Premier Steven Marshall with Police Commissioner Grant Stevens. Picture: Naomi Jellicoe

Premier Marshall’s political survival hinges on enough voters accepting the Omicron invasion was inevitable. Would Labor leader Peter Malinauskas have made the same call? Who knows?

It is easy to dismiss the “What If?” question by pointing out that 20-20 hindsight is a wonderful thing.

We opened our borders on November 23. At the time, SA was Covid-free. Our double dose vaccination rate hadn’t hit 80 per cent. We now have around 40,000 known active cases, and probably the same number again untested – or hidden.

The Omicron variant was reported to the World Health Organisation on November 24. The first Australian cases, from overseas arrivals, were confirmed in Sydney on November 28.

Six days later, on December 4, Commissioner Stevens revealed that Professor Spurrier had recommended closing the borders again until we knew more about Omicron. He described this as “the most risk averse approach we could take”.

The Premier said he remained “extraordinarily concerned about the Omicron threat”. Not extraordinarily concerned enough, it appears. But they dug in.

What if they hadn’t?