Premiers are pulling the handbrake on recovery

This year, the silly season certainly is living up to its nomenclature. How else to explain a precipitous closure of state borders with the resultant traffic chaos as the holiday dreams of families and business owners are dashed? It is an absurdity matched only by repeated calls that Australia muscle its way to the front of the COVID-19 vaccine queue against nations suffering caseloads that constitute a real and present pandemic emergency. Behind the political fearmongering and bureaucratic overreach from premiers outside NSW stands the reality of Australia’s mercifully low coronavirus case numbers: nil on Monday in NSW, with two known that will be reported on Tuesday, and three in Victoria. Queensland has not had community transmission for 111 days. The last time an active case was found outside of quarantine was 18 days ago.

This is not good enough news for a nation of armchair epidemiologists who want the Sydney New Year’s Test against India to be abandoned or at least played to a silent ground without spectators. There are reasons to be alert to the threat posed by the outbreak that started as a cluster on Sydney’s northern beaches. The virus has spread to other parts of Sydney and leaked across state borders in a limited way. There have been worrying lapses of social distancing regulations by some venues. But the numbers still speak to the competence and professionalism of the teams of contact tracers that government is depending on to keep the spread of the virus in check.

The same cannot be said for the ham-fisted state planners in Victoria who have put thousands of citizens into compulsory quarantine for visiting NSW, even to areas where there have been no recorded cases. Anecdotal evidence from the Victoria-NSW border is of marathon delays and rising tempers as holiday-makers rushed back from as far away as the NSW north coast to beat a deadline of even harsher measures.

To add to confusion, Victorian health authorities have been unable to deliver a clear message on potential coronavirus exposure sites. Wrong sites have been listed and later revised, sometimes to other locations hours away on the other side of the Great Dividing Range. Mistakes happen but authoritarian bungling adds to the misery for businesses that had been counting on holiday travel to overcome the heartache of lockdowns. In what is becoming a sharpened political contest between states, NSW has kept its head and remains the gold standard. Premier Gladys Berejiklian has taken leave and her deputy, Nationals leader John Barilaro, said he was “confident” the state was equipped to host the Test match at the Sydney Cricket Ground. It is not a laissez-faire endeavour, however. Spectator numbers have been reduced further and rural residents are being asked to reconsider attendance to avoid the risk of spreading the virus to areas that currently are unaffected.

Mr Barilaro also has criticised Western Australia for being unnecessarily interfering. He said NSW was doing the heavy lifting by quarantining returning travellers destined for other states. More than 100,000 passengers had been processed in Sydney, with about half going to other states after quarantine. Given the criticisms of other premiers, Mr Barilaro said NSW could forward passengers straight to other jurisdictions to be processed in their home state. West Australian Premier Mark McGowan urged NSW to stick to the national agreement that visitors or returning residents be quarantined at their point of entry. Mr McGowan accused Mr Barilaro of “not acting as an Australian”.

Squabbling among premiers is not new, particularly around election time, as is the case in WA. The outbreak of parochialism does not bode well for the state of co-operative federalism. Federal Labor’s answer is to shield state governments from responsibility and pass the additional cost to the commonwealth. Research by accounting firm KPMG estimates the northern beaches outbreak and lockdown cost the economy $3.2bn in lost working hours last month. This will be enough to slow but not stop the economic rebound that began in the September quarter. The KPMG research demonstrates that even NSW’s more measured approach to suppressing the outbreak comes at significant cost. Closing state borders and introducing harsh quarantine regimes comes with an even bigger bill attached.

Anthony Albanese’s call for the JobKeeper payment to be maintained at its 2020 level is the wrong response. The federal Opposition Leader argues reducing JobKeeper will hurt individuals, families and business by reducing economic activity when we know there is “still a major handbrake on the economy”. It is premiers who are unnecessarily pulling the brake.