Mainstream determined to get vaccinated and move on

Anthony Albanese has made a welcome shift towards hope by embracing the Doherty Institute road map to lift Covid-19 restrictions as vaccination rates rise. But his conversion looks hasty and insincere as he simultaneously seeks to back Labor premiers in Queensland and Western Australia who show no signs of weakening their resolve to maintain border closures and lockdowns. As a result, the federal Opposition Leader appears to have been forced to act by former Labor leader Bill Shorten’s public comments of support for the Doherty Institute’s recommendations.

At worst, Mr Albanese is half-pregnant and out of touch with the determination of mainstream Australians to get vaccinated and to get on with it. As Dennis Shanahan wrote on Wednesday, at dinner time on Tuesday the official strategy from Mr Albanese was not to commit to the Doherty Institute recommendations that accepted zero Covid-19 cases in the community was no longer possible and to delay any commitment on the vaccination levels for as long as possible. He would side with the Labor premiers advocating lockdowns, blaming Scott Morrison for the lockdowns and hoping for another missed timetable on vaccinations. By ABC Breakfast on Wednesday that had all changed as Mr Albanese declared: “I support the national plan. It has proposals at 70 per cent and 80 per cent. It is, as it is written, there is scope there for lockdowns, but targeted if they’re absolutely necessary.”

The real message here is that Mr Albanese is looking for ways to keep lockdowns and border closures as a viable option across the Christmas period. As Simon Benson writes, the only assumption one can make is that Mr Albanese’s position within the broader Labor movement is too weak to take on the Labor premiers, who have now become pin-up stars for lockdowns. Mr Albanese is technically correct in his assessment of the Doherty road map. But the danger lies in being overrun by events.

The acceleration in vaccination rates in NSW and Victoria shows what the public wants. Victorian Department of Health and Human Services deputy secretary Naomi Bromley said that in the two hours after 7am on Tuesday, when Pfizer appointments opened to under-40s, the department’s booking website received 15,000 hits a minute and more than 1.3 million calls were made to the hotline.

In NSW, Premier Gladys Berejiklian said more than 6.1 million vaccinations had been given and nearly one-third of the state’s population was fully vaccinated. NSW chief health officer Kerry Chant said if southwestern Sydney’s 16 to 39 age group increased its levels of vaccination – “as high as possible” – NSW would be in a position to break the main chain of transmission and bring daily case numbers down.

Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt told parliament on Wednesday that 307,000 vaccinations had been delivered in the previous 24 hours, up 15 per cent. This took the national total of those fully vaccinated to more than 6.5 million, the equivalent of the populations of Melbourne, Adelaide and Townsville combined. Mr Hunt said hope and safety were the path to recovery.

The acceleration in vaccinations is being mirrored in the reduction in vaccination hesitancy. As Tom Dusevic reports on Thursday, vaccine hesitancy has eased because of rising Covid-19 infections and prolonged lockdowns in NSW, Victoria and the ACT.

According to a fortnightly tracking poll obtained by The Australian from the Melbourne Institute, measured hesitancy was 20.3 per cent last week compared with 21.8 per cent a fortnight earlier. In mid-May, before virus outbreaks in Victoria, the vaccine hesitancy tracker was at more than 35 per cent, while women are now just as likely as men to accept Covid-19 vaccination.

In Queensland, meanwhile, interstate residents attempting to relocate to the Sunshine State will not be able to cross the border from NSW for two weeks after the state government announced a “pause” to take pressure off its hotel quarantine system. Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said the more than 5000 people in hotel quarantine had overwhelmed the system.

WA Premier Mark McGowan has made a public commitment to maintain interstate border closures and lockdowns even when vaccination rates hit 80 per cent. As Paul Garvey reports on Thursday, Mr McGowan’s navigation through the pandemic has been a clear success, but navigating out of the pandemic will be far more complex.