Australian model tackles crisis

Australia has had fortunate breaks in dealing with the coronavirus pandemic. Occupying a remote continent, with low-density settlement, and seasonal warmth helped to avoid the calamities in the populous northern hemisphere. Early actions on borders, intensive testing and compliance with social distancing have underwritten our relative success in flattening the curve of COVID-19 infections. Plus, we have made our own luck. The new national cabinet is swift and focused. But our enduring institutions have made all the difference to lives and livelihoods: the mixed system of public and private hospitals, egalitarian ethos and delivery measures for income support. Former prime minister John Howard rightly lauds the “Australian model” for our progress, and cautions against any move to radically alter our basic operating system in the search for an exit strategy and beyond.

We are on the road to easing some restrictions, with the national cabinet developing guidelines to resume all levels of sporting activities and get people back to work. On Friday, Scott Morrison declared students were not required to keep a 1.5m distance from other students in their classroom. Nor would the 4sq m rule apply there. The Prime Minister emphasised the importance of contact tracing via a new voluntary app in acting quickly on fresh infection clusters. The carrot for take-up of the technology is restrictions can be eased sooner. Mr Morrison guarantees data collected would be used only by health workers; it would be protected from distribution; and it would be destroyed when the crisis had passed. Officials argue 40 per cent compliance is needed for the tracing to be effective.

Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy walks the line between elation and fear of complacency; an outbreak in vulnerable parts of the community could push hospital resources to the limit. On Friday, Professor Murphy gave an update on infection modelling. Although the effective reproduction number or Reff (the average number of people that will be infected by a contagious person) is below 1, he said we must be vigilant. Officials are still gathering data about community transmission; in the pandemic’s early phases, two-thirds of infections were from overseas, with travellers quarantined. Professor Murphy confirmed COVID-19 testing would be extended by every state and territory. He said anybody with acute respiratory symptoms — a cough, sore throat, runny nose, cold symptoms, flu symptoms — can now get tested. The aim is to get 40,000 to 50,000 people tested a day. That’s known as passive surveillance; to build better data sets, active tracking measures would test asymptomatic people and workers in a range of frontline health occupations.

The nation’s effort in suppressing the spread of COVID-19 has incurred a mammoth economic cost: $214bn in three emergency fiscal packages, rising debt, and forecasts for the largest contraction in national output since the 1930s and double-digit unemployment. Naturally, there is an opportunity to influence the speed and shape of the recovery later this year, as well as to recondition the engine of growth. The nation’s best mainstream economists have, over a decade but now more urgently, put in lights a productivity agenda. As articulated by Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe, this is centred on five areas: tax, infrastructure, education and training, regulation and industrial relations. The idea is to fix our supply side, encouraging businesses to expand invest, innovate and hire workers.

The nonpartisan and unfailingly optimistic Dr Lowe says the factors that made us rich will be there after COVID-19. Yet it is unlikely we’ll get a better chance to make our economy more dynamic and competitive. But before the crisis, we become reform shy and complacent, partly because the world kept giving us pay rises via sky-high export prices. Post-crisis it will be difficult to just trade or ride our way to the standard of living we had taken for granted. So we need to trim the flab we’ve built up, not only in hibernation but also the fat we carried into the pandemic. There’s a rare spirit of co-operation and alignment of thinking in the community. But it will require the political class in Canberra and state capitals to remove their blinkers and masks, set aside plots, stunts, knives and boxing gloves, and go for growth.