Anthony Albanese’s $300 vaccine incentive plan is fatally flawed

Anthony Albanese during a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

Anthony Albanese’s $300 cash incentive plan for covid-19 vaccinations is fatally flawed and mortally wounded.

Labor’s proposal has effectively disappeared from parliamentary debate and morphed into primarily an economic stimulus less than 24 hours after being unveiled.

The Opposition Leader’s idea went from the first question of the August parliamentary sitting with a request for Scott Morrison to embrace “Labor’s Plan” to the plan that could not be named in questions well down the order on Wednesday.

What’s more, the limited extra-parliamentary promotion from Labor frontbenchers focused on the “economic stimulus” rather than the health benefits as the obvious questions were asked about $2bn in “incentives” being paid to people who already had the jabs.

Caught in the obvious contradiction of giving cash to people who were vaccinated and couldn’t be “incentivised”, the emphasis was on the plan being a spending lift for regional areas, a little thank you for those who were vaccinated and an aid to a “tanking” economy.

The $6bn plan, with more than $2bn going to those already injected and $5bn slated to be spent by Christmas, didn’t appeal to the Australian volunteer culture, where volunteer fire fighters are offended at payments, nor did it make economic sense.

It was also hampered by a lack of preparedness and ownership in Labor ranks as a captain’s pick with the feint connection to a very different Joe Biden proposal in the United States.

There was also a resonance of the Rudd era mistake of creating a new hybrid mechanism to push a cash stimulus with a climate change initiative which resulted in the Pink Batts fiasco.

Albanese was understandably seeking to offer a positive plan for the pandemic instead of just criticising Morrison’s failures on vaccine rollout but overreached with $6bn, underestimated the public reaction and damped his own political momentum.

In Parliament on Tuesday his posture was positive, assertive and aggressive but within 24 hours he looked unsettled, defensive and unable to even identify Labor’s plan as he tried to justify the principle of incentives.

Morrison, who went into this sitting on the defensive and under internal pressure, had struck hard with his initial rejection of Albanese’s plan and went even further as he broadened the criticism to include “ill-disciplined” and “ill-informed” economic plans undeserving of government.

Labor’s plan handed Morrison a reprieve as parliament resumed when he needed it most as the Coalition politically ekes out every single day towards the deadline for the vitally decisive vaccination targets set for December.

It’s still all about vaccination rollout and easing economic restrictions. The politics and policies that will decide the next election are not going to be about Labor’s $300 cash payments.