Peta Credlin: Scott Morrison must take control to lead Australia out of pandemic
Australians want PM Scott Morrison to step up to get us out of lockdown because he should be governing the country, not taking dictation from lockdown addicted premiers, Peta Credlin writes.
Opinion
Don't miss out on the headlines from Opinion. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Rapidly rising rates of teenage self harm – up 83 per cent on last year and 162 per cent on 2019 in Victoria – are yet more evidence of the need to end lockdowns as soon as possible.
Indeed, there have been more teenagers die from suicide in Victoria this year than adults die from Covid.
Yet the lockdown addicted Labor premiers are still insisting on at least 80 per cent vaccination before any opening up (many demanding zero Covid as well) and the Prime Minister is still trying to have it both ways.
Australia’s response to the pandemic has essentially been a tale of two cities: Melbourne, that’s been repeatedly locked up at the first sign of an infection; and Sydney that’s tried to live with the virus.
Last year, Melbourne suffered one of the world’s harshest lockdowns. More recently, it’s been Sydney’s turn, prompting the Victorian Premier to sneer at his NSW counterpart for not locking down fast enough, hard enough.
The boot might soon be on the other foot though, with Treasurer Josh Frydenberg recently joking that the hardest thing about the pandemic was living through the third and fourth weeks of Dan Andrews’ “short, sharp” one-week lockdowns.
On the evidence so far, there’s no lockdown that’s hard enough to eliminate the Delta variant. At least, not one that any democracy would tolerate.
Cases in Victoria, albeit off a lower base, are now growing faster than those in NSW which puts paid to the Andrews lie that if you lock up early you can get this variant under control.
Twenty-two days into its current outbreak, Victoria registered 80 new daily cases, compared to a highest daily number of just 40 at the same stage in NSW, notwithstanding the much harsher lockdown south of the Murray.
Against Delta, it seems, short of literally welding everyone inside their homes, lockdowns can’t eliminate community transmission.
Quite rightly, in NSW, the emphasis is now on hospitalisations rather than cases. On Saturday, despite nearly 15,000 active Covid cases, there were just 778 hospitalisations in a state with well over 20,000 beds in public hospitals alone.
The system was “under strain” said Premier Gladys Berejiklian, but “we have prepared for this” and it was coping.
Right now, people in NSW are getting jabbed at a record rate because Gladys Berejiklian declares that vaccination is your ticket to freedom.
It’s a different story in Melbourne where the Premier has given no indication when the current lockdown might end.
On Thursday, just 51,000 Victorians were jabbed. In NSW, 138,000 were jabbed. Read those numbers again because it’s a critical difference and means NSW, unlike Victoria, is now on track for 70 per cent full-vaccination well before the end of October.
And why wouldn’t you get vaccinated in NSW given that the government had already announced a tiny relaxation of restrictions for the double-jabbed next month, has just announced that schools would (mostly) go back on October 25, and is now promising a substantial escape from stay-at-home orders (at least for the double-jabbed) once vaccinations reach 70 per cent.
People in NSW aren’t getting vaccinated because they’re scared, despite the media’s best efforts to create the impression of hospitals overrun with gravely ill. They’re getting jabbed because the Premier has linked vaccinations to freedom.
In Victoria, meanwhile, there’s no end in sight because a Covid-obsessed Premier refuses to commit to any particular freedoms at any particular vaccination rates; and with his scorn for anyone who stops to look at the sunset and his ban on taking off masks if it’s to drink alcohol, obviously thinks that freedom is a privilege to be doled out sparingly to people who aren’t sufficiently grateful for what tiny liberty they have.
Now the second most locked-down city in the world, Melburnians in particular are on the verge of civil disobedience: not yet ready to protest; but now prepared to bend the rules by dropping teenagers in the park to meet up with mates, letting little ones climb over cordoned off playgrounds, mindful as every parent is that the mental health toll is breaking many of our young people
If Labor strategists don’t think ‘Arrogant Andrews’ is hurting their brand, they’re kidding themselves. Those trying to find solace in the published polls should remember they’ve been more wrong than right in recent years, here and overseas.
What’s saving them is a hapless Liberal opposition that as recently as last week seemed to think they can win the next election by avoiding taking Andrews on over lockdowns, and sitting somewhere in the ‘centre’ spreading messages of sunshine and light.
Well good luck with that, Malcolm Turnbull tried the ‘centre’ game and ending up losing 14 seats in 2016 and he wasn’t up against a ruthless operator like Andrews who operates from the hard-left and ruthlessly exploits the taxpayer to dominate social media.
To win, oppositions have got to offer an alternative because elections are a contest, not a coronation.
There’s a lesson here for Scott Morrison who only last week became a latter-day convert to vaccinating our way to freedom. Before that, it was hard to know what the Prime Minister wanted apart from not getting anyone off-side.
On April 9, he said that he wanted to “begin starting to treat Covid like the flu …(and) we haven’t engaged in mass lockdowns … because of the flu”.
On April 19, he said “Let’s ensure that Australia keeps living the way it is … which we’ve been very successful at”.
On May 27, he applauded Victoria’s “circuit-breaking lockdown”.
On July 2, he said that lockdowns should “be only used as a last resort”.
While he now backs in opening up once we get to 70 and 80 per cent vaccination rates, the Prime Minister must be able to do more than just support it; he must be able to ensure recalcitrant Premiers do as they agreed at national cabinet, or his leadership will suffer.
How can he expect voters in a few months’ time to elect him to lead the country in an increasingly uncertain international environment if he can’t even make Premiers stick to their commitments?
Australians are willing Morrison to step up to get us out of lockdown inertia because governing for the country is what prime ministers are supposed to do, not take dictation from premiers.
As it stands, Anthony Albanese and the ALP don’t deserve to win the next election due to their failure to put forward a credible program of change for the better.
Morrison’s danger is conservative people on the right who think the Libs deserve to lose for abandoning their commitment to smaller government and greater freedom.
With the “lucky country” inflicting so much damage on itself, it will be very hard for the government to win a fourth term solely on the grounds that the alternative would be worse.
THUMBS UP
The Australian Defence Force personnel who put themselves in harm’s way (once again) to evacuate 4000 citizens and visa holders from Kabul. The suicide bombing is a stark reminder that Islamic State is still a potent enemy, alongside the Taliban.
THUMBS DOWN
The ACT magistrate who imposed a paltry $20 fine on protesters who vandalised Parliament House while normal people cop a $500 fine for not wearing a mask. It’s hard to respect the law when it has such double standards.
Watch Peta Credlin on Sky News, weeknights at 6pm
More Coverage
What your private school says about you
The school you went to says a lot if you ask Sydneysiders. But the private school circuit is exclusive and elusive, and we’re here to help decipher it.
Hezbollah, Houthis, Hamas: Why Israel forces could be at risk
Although Israel has a strong and well-trained army, time will tell if it can cope with fighting on several fronts, writes Middle East scholar Ian Parmeter.