Blame game as Victoria demands taxpayer support

The stoush between Victoria and the Morrison government over taxpayer-funded support for businesses struggling through a week-long Covid lockdown — the state’s fourth in 14 months — is a bad case of unseemly politics. Tim Pallas’s complaint, that the Morrison government’s refusal to put its hand in taxpayers’ pockets to match the state’s $250 million support package is “nothing short of a disgrace’’, cannot be justified. Federal Labor, the ACTU, Greens and industry groups are also demanding federal assistance. But Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg should stand firm. The commonwealth has already contributed three times as much support ($45 billion compared to $15 billion) to Victorian businesses. The federal support to the state includes $28 billion in JobKeeper payments to 310,000 businesses and 1.1 million employees. More importantly, having decided to go into lockdown, for the second time this year, the Victorian government must take on the financial responsibility for its decision. As the Prime Minister said on Sunday, the Queensland and Western Australian governments took on those responsibilities in similar circumstances earlier this year. For the sake of state and the national economies, lockdowns need to be avoided as much as possible. And Victoria, mainly because of last year’s 112-day lockdown, has had more federal economic support per capita during the pandemic than any other state, as the Treasurer says.

That said, the crisis has highlighted serious shortcomings in dealing with the pandemic by both levels of government. As we said last week, the Morrison government should get on and finalise the building of new, dedicated quarantine facilities. The need for such facilities is clearer than ever with worrying developments overseas. Vietnam is battling a new variant that is reportedly a hybrid of those first found in India and Britain. In Brazil, hundreds of babies, children and pregnant women died of Covid-19, baffling doctors and researchers. The pandemic, unfortunately, appears to have a long way to run.

The latest Victorian outbreak has given Australia’s slow vaccine rollout a desperately needed boost, taking the total number of people who have had at least one jab past 4.2 million. Australians turning out in record numbers — 600,000 in the past week to be vaccinated — is the only upside of the Victorian crisis. The faster rates must continue. It is inexcusable, however, that the process was not completed in all nursing homes, including for all staff, by the time the problem emerged. Nursing homes are a federal responsibility. As Acting Premier James Merlino said on Sunday, the mystery case of an aged-care employee at Arcare Maidstone in Melbourne’s west was a “very, very serious matter”. The woman, in her 50s, who tested positive on Saturday, has had her first dose of a vaccine. She has no known connection to other cases in the state’s latest outbreak. Of 76 residents at the centre, 53 had consented to the vaccine, Health Minister Greg Hunt said on Sunday. But only a third of aged-care workers at the nursing home had been vaccinated. Given the risks, that is scandalous.

Victoria’s government, unfortunately, has fallen badly short in maximising the take-up of vaccines. Queues at vaccination hubs reached breaking point on Saturday, with people turned away. Others had to wait up to seven hours. The state’s Covid hotline crashed after 77,000 calls in 15 minutes on Friday. As with hotel quarantining, lockdowns of city towers and contact tracing last year, and QR codes, Victoria continues to struggle with the technicalities of dealing with the pandemic. It must get it right. On Sunday, Australian Medical Association president Omar Khorshid said there is a “significant chance” the lockdown will have to be extended beyond seven days.