Australia’s Covid policies won’t cut it for our kids’ future

There are few signs Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Health Minister Greg Hunt are planning on opening the country sensibly until after the election, writes Janet Albrechtsen. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

For a prime minister, the chance to walk the world stage when an election is looming is a golden opportunity. Scott Morrison did that with aplomb at the Group of Seven last week. Plenty of headlines at home featuring handshakes and chats with G7 leaders. The aim, to project an image of him harnessing international respect, may have been achieved.

But the Prime Minister’s visit to Britain presents a far more complicated message than he wants. When Morrison was asked whether he was concerned about travelling to a country with Covid cases, one that was opening up to the world, while Australia had wedded itself to a zero-Covid model, he said his policy wouldn’t change and “there is no substitute for leaders getting together and doing what we are doing now”. He is right. Critical meetings should go ahead because countries are learning to live with the virus.

But Morrison’s answer exposes a central hypocrisy. He has travelled to a country that is living sensibly with Covid, vaccinating its people at speedy rates, while he holds the rest of Australia hostage. Australians remain locked inside the country, at least until the election, to satisfy an increasingly political imperative that celebrates zero Covid cases.

The double standard won’t be lost on Australians at home. Not on the heartbroken ones still separated from families. Nor on the hardworking Australians trying to run or expand a business.

Images of Morrison in Britain highlight what he and Josh Frydenberg have failed to do well. When it comes to boosting long-term economic growth, encouraging businesses to grow, there is no substitute for providing them with a plan out of fortress Australia. That path would show Australians the government is serious about making us more globally competitive because this is important for the nation’s future.

Resting on our laurels, celebrating zero cases and cheering short-term economic numbers are not a serious plan for the country. Yet large sections of the country, including the Morrison government, are hiding from that reality, refusing to think about how to dismantle a new, equally damaging, form of protectionist walls.

Covid-19 has become a dangerous cover for complac­ency. At one level, as Morrison crowed at a press conference in Cornwall, life is pretty good in Australia. We can go to the footy, go to work, go out to dinner, take a road trip (unless you’re a Melburnian, in which case 25km is the radius of your gilded cage).

And the Treasurer is right to be relieved that the economy seems to have bounced back. But Frydenberg’s assertions of government genius aside, we don’t know the reason. So, we had better get serious about what to do when circumstances change, which they always do.

Business Council of Australia head Jennifer Westacott issued a warning recently: while every generation of Australians since the war has left their children and grandchildren better off, it will be shameful if we are the first to fail that test. It is not an iron rule that Australia will always provide its people with the good life. Some facts from Westacott should dismantle our complacency.

When a business expands, or develops new services or products, they need talent, often from overseas. If skilled workers can’t enter the country, businesses will choose not to expand, or they will do so elsewhere. Australian businesses will not expand or do new things in Australia if the country remains shut for much longer. Once our businesses expand in other countries or leave there will be little reason to return here.

We need to be far more ambitious. The 2.5 per cent growth rate, set down in the May budget, won’t create new industries to expand the economy, drive productivity and wage growth. Without greater ambition, planning and reform, Westacott warns that we will become a second-rate economy, overwhelmed by our competitors.

When Australian industries expand into new countries, how will Australia generate revenues needed to pay down debt, create buffers for new crises and support the standard of living we have grown accustomed to, and want to hand on to our kids?

Australia’s company tax revenue is not guaranteed. The budget papers show that if the iron ore price settles around the long-run average today, Australians will lose $12bn in tax revenue across the forward estimates.

Our top 10 companies pay a quarter of all company tax. Forty-seven per cent of our exports rely on fossil fuel industries. And for 35 years our biggest companies have remained the banks and mining companies. If they don’t thrive, neither does the country.

In the US, big tech companies have stolen the ranks from manufacturers such as General Motors, Ford and ExxonMobil. Where is the innovation in Australia?

Australia ranks 16th in the Global Competitiveness Index, behind many of our neighbours. Our 30 per cent corporate tax rate is not competitive. Nor is our industrial relations system. If we want to attract foreign capital to expand the economy, and improve standards of living for future generations, we need regu­lation that matches that ambition, Westacott says. Current set­tings point to future stagnation.

The biggest problem facing Australia is not the threat of Covid cases; it is complacency, a new form of “she’ll be right, mate” so long as we keep Covid out of the country. This mentality emanates from the highest levels. It is dangerously insular.

Sadly, there are few signs that Morrison or the Health Minister are planning on opening the country sensibly, beyond a few travel bubbles, until after the election. Perhaps only then will a prime minister and a treasurer confront the challenges at hand, and the need to educate Australians about them. As an election draws closer, Australians should remember that our kids won’t thank us for being complacent and insular.