Prime Minister Scott Morrison must pull rank on outdated Covid iso rules

Scott Morrison should pick a fight over the disruptive close contact rules that punish people for living with a positive Covid case.

Take a trip to court on any given day and you can witness criminals walk in the front door and come back out again half an hour later.

Drug dealers, child abuse material fiends – all sorts of people who have put others in real danger are allowed back on the streets with a rap over the knuckles and a promise they’ll never do it again.

Meanwhile, people who pose absolutely no risk to anyone are being locked in their homes for a week because they’ve had the great misfortune of not catching Covid-19.

That’s the state of Australia’s outdated close contact rules – punishing people because someone they live with contracted Covid, even if they haven’t had to blow their nose in a week.

When you think about it, these rules, rather than encouraging people to get away from their snotty family members for a while, are actually forcing healthy, uninfected people to spend all their time at home with someone who does have Covid, thus increasing their chances of getting sick.

Don’t forget, it’s all about the science.

But it has now become all about the disruption.

If ever there was a time for the Prime Minister to wade back into the Covid debate, it would be now. Picture: Damian Shaw

Schools are now shutting across the country because people who don’t have Covid are not allowed to go to work and are instead at home with sick people.

More than 10 state schools are closed in South Australia due to teacher shortages.

In NSW this week, one in five students did not show up for school and 20 public schools shut their gates.

Some of these children were sick, but the majority were forced into isolation because they were household contacts or were unable to attend a classroom because of teacher shortages.

It is a story familiar to many families at the moment. Mum gets sick so dad’s not allowed to go to work and the two children are not allowed to go to school.

Many of these household contacts make it through the entire isolation period without contracting Covid.

My parents were recently forced to bunker down with my younger brother who contracted Covid.

They only have one bathroom and toilet and didn’t make any great effort to keep him locked up in solitary confinement – yet neither of them became sick.

If you suffer the misfortune of someone in the house coming down with Covid on the last day of isolation, you then have to lock yourself up for another week.

For a family of six, this process could go on for more than a month.

The effect this has on productivity and the economy is immense. We saw what happened earlier in the year when supermarkets couldn't get enough truck drivers and warehouse workers to move our food.

This problem has largely been fixed for big businesses, but it is still just as fraught for those with small businesses.

If you only have a handful of staff it takes just three people who aren’t sick to be banned from coming to work and you have to close your doors.

And the biggest losers, again, are Australia’s children – those least likely to suffer badly with Covid.

For two years they have been subjected, at various times, to learning from home and having to wear masks all day at school.

In some parts of the country (ahem, Melbourne) children effectively lost two years’ worth of classroom time – time when they should have been making friends and learning how to socialise with their peers.

They even had playgrounds taken away from them because they were supposedly such a great public health risk.

And just as our kids started returning to a sense of normality, their schools began closing again.

The psychological effects on children of lockdowns and restrictions will be long lasting. Eminent psychologists around the country are reporting spikes in children presenting with suicidal ideation, eating disorders and self-harm.

Apropos to nothing, 10 people aged under 20 have died of Covid in Australia.

It is unfair for children to again have to shoulder the biggest burden of this pandemic.

If ever there were a time for Prime Minister Scott Morrison to wade back into the Covid debate and actually do something, it would be now.

State governments are all sticking to their guns on close contact rules on the basis that it is currently recommended by the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee.

But we know that states don’t always care for the advice.

Isolation rules are punishing people for living with someone who contracted Covid.

As much as premiers may try to push this back on the AHPPC, the decision to make people who do not have Covid stay at home is one that falls squarely in the laps of the states.

Mr Morrison’s leadership on Covid matters, outside of economic assistance, has been generally weak. national cabinet was a disaster as each state went its own way – and the PM even endorsed Western Australia’s closed border earlier this year.

But nearly a month ago he referred to these isolation rules as “redundant”.

This is a problem hurting families and small businesses across the country – and he ought to pick a fight over it.

Mr Morrison cannot force the states to do anything. But he is well within his rights to give them a serve, particularly when the majority are now governed by Labor.

If the states won’t do what is best for their people, then the federal government ought to intervene.

Mr Morrison did this successfully, on this very issue, at the beginning of the year when he announced at a press conference, the day before a national cabinet meeting, that he wanted the definition of a close contact to be heavily scaled back.

The states faced embarrassment if they defied him.

Now is the time for Mr Morrison to do the same again – and with an election looming, it would be a welcome intervention to most voters.