Coronavirus: Great reopening changes Scott Morrison’s political fortunes

Scott Morrison’s fortunes have suddenly changed. Picture: Getty Images

The great reopening has begun: Australia’s eastern seaboard will be free to internal and international travel without quarantine for double-vaxxed citizens before Christmas.

The public psychology has changed, the prospect for international travel has changed and so has the political outlook for Scott Morrison and his “national plan” for learning to live with Covid-19 and engineering an economic recovery.

In the past few days, NSW Liberal Premier Dominic Perrottet has gone from being a “rogue state” leader to being merely the first domino to fall on lifting restrictions on personal freedom and reopening the economy in keeping with surging vaccination rates.

In the past few hours, Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk went from being a shut-down champion to the latest domino to fall in the face of vaccination success, economic pressure and a clear lead from NSW and the ACT.

Even Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews, a global city lockdown champion facing daily Covid-19 cases of close to 2000, is opening up the economy and borders as much as he can based on projections for vaccination and hospitalisations.

NSW’s change was the herald for all change: state borders lifting, removal of masks, people being able to return home and, perhaps most importantly, to travel overseas and come back from foreign climes.

The Prime Minister may have reined in Perrottet’s international ambitions a bit but a combination of fear of the Delta virus and an incentive of freer travel and a Christmas family lunch have unleashed a public pressure that premiers are finding almost impossible to resist.

As Morrison said in question time on Monday: “Planes are getting ready to take off.”

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk. Picture: NCA NewsWire / John Gass

For Palaszczuk, the problem was the planes were getting ready to take Australians to Fiji and Japan, Europe and the US, but not to Cairns and the Barrier Reef. Queensland’s tourist industry is on its knees and desperately needs Australians in other states who desperately want to come to them.

All these developments will make it almost impossible for the premiers to reimpose blanket bans and lockdowns as they cite accepted levels of vaccination they agreed would be high enough to reopen.

NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet fired the first shot in opening up. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gaye Gerard

This has changed the pandemic equation and the political parameters.

Instead of fighting with Labor premiers over border closures going into the election next year, Morrison can concentrate on economic recovery and point to vaccination success, arguably the best in the world.

This is vastly different to facing sabotage and revolt from premiers who had seen the reality of living with Covid-19 and the absolutely essential need to open for business. That’s how Dominic became a domino and changed the economic and political landscape.