States must honour PM’s plan to reopen the nation

On Monday the nation begins the first full week of the new financial year with a springboard for reopening to the world post pandemic. Scott Morrison’s four-phase transition plan must not be bungled or sabotaged by a recalcitrant state as Australia faces the major economic and productivity challenges outlined in the Intergenerational Report. As business leaders said on Sunday, the states, after agreeing to the plan, must honour it in the national interest. On Friday the Prime Minister conceded significant ground to Labor premiers, agreeing to a 50 per cent reduction in international travel caps until at least the end of next month.

That proviso is producing alarming consequences for hard-pressed Australians abroad and their families, with some one-way economy airfares from London to Australia soaring at the weekend. Capacity needs to be restored as soon as possible, especially if the vaccine rollout continues at its present pace of about a million jabs a week. Business, quite reasonably, is pushing hard for the road map to have lockdowns scrapped and the international border reopened by the start of next year.

With 9 per cent of Australians fully vaccinated and 30 per cent having had one jab so far, GPs will begin offering the Pfizer vaccine to 40 to 59-year-olds from this week. It will push the rollout closer to allowing the nation to move to the next phase of Mr Morrison’s plan. In the meantime, phase one includes important steps that will help boost the economy and encourage greater movement. State leaders need to co-operate in implementing those measures. They cover new quarantine options, including home quarantine for returning vaccinated travellers; expanding trials for the entry of student and economic visa holders; and lockdowns being used only as a last resort.

Barring unforeseen disaster, the current NSW lockdown should be the nation’s last. At this stage, the Berejiklian government is quietly confident it will be lifted on schedule at the end of this week.

At this stage, setting the vaccine thresholds for moving to the next phase of the four-phase plan is a critically important step. The targets – to be set by the COVID-19 Risk Analysis and Response Taskforce, based on scientific modelling conducted by the Doherty Institute – need to be realistic or the whole four-step agreement will fail, as Australian Industry Group chief executive Innes Willox warns: “We don’t want to set ourselves up to fail.” What is agreed has to be achievable and in a reasonable time frame, as he says. “To have a percentage target that is too high just defeats the purpose of having an agreement.”

The federation is fragile enough, as Mr Willox says, without a premier or chief health officer taking it on themselves to think they know best and undermining co-operation. The last thing the nation needs is a repeat of last week’s spectacle when Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and chief health officer Jeannette Young unleashed a reckless assault on the vaccine rollout. Once set, the timetables will work only “if all the states and territories agree to end the patchwork of restrictions and work together in the national interest”, as Business Council of Australia chief executive Jennifer Westacott says.

As well as being critical to long-term productivity and prosperity, executing Mr Morrison’s four-phase plan will be an important test of the ability of the federation to unite in a crisis. In the early stage of the pandemic, national cabinet served the public well. Subsequent brawling, however, highlighted the shortcomings of the system. In the recovery phase, the states and territories need to look beyond parochialism to ensure borders can open and interaction with the outside world can resume as soon as possible. In a global economy, operating in a bubble is not conducive to trade, investment, public and business confidence, and building momentum for growth and jobs when other nations have reopened. Premiers must be accountable for honouring the agreement.