James Campbell: NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet shows Australia the way

Dominic Perrottet is sending a message, writes James Campbell: go out, enjoy yourself, we can deal with this.

Dominic Perrottet has been Premier of NSW for less than two weeks but already he’s shown he’s going to be a national game-changer.

Friday’s announcement that from the start of next month that as far he’s concerned anyone who’s fully-vaccinated can come and go from NSW without having to quarantine was the biggest and best of a series of relaxations to lockdown rules he has already rammed through.

Schools are coming back earlier than they were going to in Gladys-time, indoor pools are open again, mask rules are being relaxed, more people can visit each other’s houses and outdoors, nightclubs are coming back and so on.

The changes themselves are less important than the message they send. Instead of talking about Covid normal or some other formula of words that can be translated as ‘be afraid’ Perrottet is sending out a simple message: “It’s over.”

NSW has become the first state in Australia to hit the critical 80 per cent double dose vaccination target. Picture: Adam Yip

Like the UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Perrottet has grasped that while declaring the pandemic to be over doesn’t actually change the facts on the ground, it can change the way the story is covered.

A quick read of the British newspapers shows that while that country is still recording around 40,000 cases a day and 150 people are dying, the virus is no longer anywhere near the top story.

This can partly be explained by the fact that if you’ve been vaccinated your chances of becoming seriously ill plummet and your chances of dying are very low indeed.

But it’s also the case, I suspect, that after 18 months of covering one story, Fleet Street has moved on.

It would have been nice if Scott Morrison had grabbed the opportunity to change the national conversation, Perrottet handed him by scrapping quarantine.

Instead the Prime Minister appeared at Kirribilli to tell us that as far as he was concerned Perrottet’s move changed nothing.

He’ll be sticking to the national plan agreed to by National Cabinet, thank you very much, and he’ll be letting migrants, students and tourists back into Australia when he’s good and ready.

The rationale offered for extraordinary timidity is that while people in Sydney and Melbourne – especially Melbourne – might be ready to get ready to face the world, that’s not where the rest of the country is right now.

Fully reopening the borders would, according to this thinking, mean the internal borders stay closed for longer.

You could just as well argue in attempting to show the rest of Australia we have nothing to fear from re-engaging with the rest of the world, Perrottet is setting an example that other states will have no option but to follow.

When their friends and family in NSW start posting photos from Bali on their Instagram and Facebook accounts surely the rest of Australia is going to wake up to how ridiculous it is that scores of Queenslanders have been locked out of their homes by their government?

But perhaps Canberra is right and the Queensland and Western Australia governments are not for moving at the moment.

But one thing you can be absolutely sure of is Perrottet’s boldness is playing on the mind of the Victorian Government.

The past 18 months have been tough going for arrogant Melburnians.

Ever since Jeff Kennett grasped the nettle and reformed Victoria from top to bottom, Victorians have become used to just assuming their state is better run than the convict colony to the north.

The hotel quarantine and contact tracing disasters showed that this is just not so.

The failures have been cruel blows to our self-esteem, which the state government’s public sector fan club has dealt with, by pretending they didn’t happen.

For a brief period earlier this year their spirits rose when it looked as though NSW was going to have to endure what Melburnians are still going through.

In August this brought forth one of those smart-alec comments from Daniel Andrews that from time to time act as a small consolation to those of us who have to put up with his regime.

NSW Deputy Premier Paul Toole and NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet share a beer at Watson's Pub. Picture: Adam Yip

In extending the state’s lockdown the Premier warned: “I don’t want us to finish up like Sydney where it has fundamentally got away from them, they are not reopening soon, they are locked in until they get pretty much the whole place vaccinated.”

Many Victorians will have reflected on these words of wisdom on Monday as television news showed pictures of Sydneysiders drinking in pubs and restaurants.

No doubt they popped unprompted into a few minds on Wednesday, too, when Dan’s proper hard man lockdown gave Victoria a record 2293 cases.

Nothing better sums up the Kafka-esque lunacy of the Victorian Government’s response
to this disaster than the fact that people will be able to travel to places in regional Victoria from NSW while Melbourne’s population remain confined to 15km of their home.

But as I said, the changes that Perrottet has made to any particular rule is less important than the larger message he is sending: go out, enjoy yourself, we can deal with this.

Whether this will have an effect on the Covid-free jurisdictions is unclear, it’s certainly inducing intense feelings of jealousy in those of us still locked up in Melbourne.