Come to the party, Santa Claus, and reopen international border to vaccinated Australians

Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese, former deputy PM Michael McCormack and Scott Morrison at the Parliament House Christmas tree in December 2019. Picture: AAP

Last weekend Scott Morrison said families could make plans for a family Christmas. We could have “all our loved ones at the dinner table, cracking bonbons and bad jokes together”. Is the former marketing guy trying to turn himself from national prison warden into Santa Claus? Can we really believe in a family Christmas? Does it mean we can meet up with family across a city, across a state border or overseas?

Last Friday a three-year-old boy who was separated from his parents for 56 days by the border closure between Queensland and NSW ran across the tarmac, finally reunited with Mum and Dad. It happened only after media attention forced Queensland’s Premier and health bureaucrats, who had refused exemptions, to behave like human beings.

On Sunday, mums, dads and kids stretched out their hands to touch each other on Father’s Day, leaning over big plastic orange dividers at Coolangatta that enforce the closed border between Queensland and NSW. As federal Liberal MP Dave Sharma told this column, it was like those poor families reuniting briefly at the demilitarised zone between North and South Korea in 2018.

It’s terrific that the Prime Minister was able to see his kids on Sunday. When will other children be reunited with their parents without needing to beg a bureaucrat?

The federation is broken. Morrison cannot force states to keep to the national plan to end lockdowns at 80 per cent vaccination levels but he can step up to inject positive compe­titive federalism into the country.

Last week he said he could see a scenario where NSW allowed people to travel overseas, even if they couldn’t cross the Nullarbor. He should make it happen. He could announce today that international border will reopen to fully vaccinated Australians. He could dismantle the North Korean-style begging system he set up in March last year, where Australians still have to show cause for permission to leave the country. What made sense then has become a lazy way to avoid leading the country out of zero Covid.

Morrison talks a good game. He speaks fast, sentences packed with carefully massaged, poll-driven slogans. His Santa routine is a reminder that delivery has been his downfall. Some cabinet ministers are privately scathing and say more common sense emanates from backbench MPs than from the Prime Minister’s office. Sharma’s tweet last week comparing vaccination rates, average Delta cases and mortality rates across countries with influenza mortality rates should be part of Morrison’s talking points.

Israel delta
Vacc rate 78% (12+)
Av Daily cases 9k
Mortality rate 0.28%

UK delta
Vacc rate 79% (16+)
Daily cases 33k
Mortality 0.29%

Aus delta
Vacc rate 36% (16+)
Daily cases 1245
Mortality 0.34%

VIC 2nd wave
Mortality 4.2%

Influenza season
200k cases
Mortality 0.3%

— Dave Sharma (@DaveSharma) September 2, 2021

Our hermit kingdom built by Morrison is proving hard to dismantle. “Covid Prison” Britain’s The Times newspaper blared last Thursday. A week earlier London’s Spectator magazine featured a cover story by former foreign minister Alexander Downer: “Australians have a reputation for rugged individualism, grit and competence. But when it comes to the pandemic, we have seen another side to my country: insecure, anxious and frozen by the fear of death from Covid.” He noted a recent poll that found Australians were more worried about the virus than any other Western country. “They have been scared witless by the hysteria of politicians, chief medical officers and the media,” he wrote.

“How long can a democracy maintain emergency restrictions and still call itself a free country?” The Atlantic asked last week. The Wall Street Journal has lamented our refusal to confront reality, too: “Eradication of Covid is a Dan­gerous and Expensive Fantasy”. This condemnation is not akin to 2001 when snooty international elites attacked Australia’s determination to manage refugees. In the intervening 20 years, many European nations have copied our immigration policies. No Western country will be copying zero Covid.

Zero Covid didn’t just separate a three-year-old boy from his parents for 56 days. Slavish adherence has meant curfews and playgrounds being shut, with no supporting science. Serious mental health tragedies are unfolding.

The social fabric of our communities is being torn apart by politicians who cannot be trusted with power. Witness NSW Police Minister David Elliott telling people in NSW “you must call Crime Stoppers” if you know someone not abiding by public health orders. No one is obliged to dob. This is not East Germany.

The Australian Financial Review’s John Kehoe recently pointed out that zero Covid policies coincided with 3475 “excess” deaths (up 6.3 per cent) in the first five months of this year compared with the five-year average. During that period there was not one Covid death but more deaths than usual, mostly from cancer, diabetes and dementia.

Morrison can do more than talk wistfully about Christmas dinners. He can offer a much-needed dose of competitive federalism by opening the inter­national border to vaccinated Australians. Gladys Berejiklian will surely be the first Premier to take him up on it. She has said hotel quarantine was yesterday’s response. And the NSW Premier, more gracious than her Queensland counterpart, won’t be saying that Sydney airports are for Sydney people only.

At the rate Daniel Andrews is being mugged by reality, he may follow Berejiklian. Then let Annastacia Palaszczuk explain to vaccinated Queenslanders why they will remain locked inside the state, separated from families and the world. Let Mark McGowan explain why his people can’t travel to Sydney to see family, while NSW residents fly to the US or Britain to hug a son or daughter they haven’t seen for two years.

Qantas aircraft taxi at Sydney Airport. Picture: NCA NewsWire / James Gourley

Some spirited competitive federalism might force McGowan to realise he is like an incompetent long-distance runner who thinks he’s in front because he can’t see anyone near him but has been lapped, over and over, by leaders who are not hiding in la-la land with his crass politics of division.

Last week Berejiklian said if you’re not comfortable going out for a meal at 70 per cent vaccination levels, you can stay at home. That logic applies across the country. People in other states should not bear the dismal consequences of the zero Covid pipedreams of WA and Queensland.

SA businessman Sam Shahin is right to hope history will record that the country owes Berejiklian and her government “a great debt in pushing our nation into making choices we would otherwise have procrastinated longer on”.