Vaccines, not panic, on Covid

Business owners and households have every right to feel betrayed by the decision on Monday to put Australia’s third most populous city into lockdown because of a small number of new COVID-19 cases. Hopes that, with the vaccine rollout under way, border closures and lockdowns could be avoided and people could plan their travel and business arrangements with confidence have been dashed. Coming immediately before the Easter holidays, the blow is doubly hard. Coinciding with the end of the federal government’s JobKeeper, the Brisbane lockdown will make business owners and their employees feel less confident and less secure about their future. A three-day lockdown of Greater Brisbane was imposed from 5pm Monday after four new cases were recorded from community transmission. Schools have been shut, masks are mandatory across the state and Brisbane people are able to leave home for only four essential reasons.

Snap lockdowns have been a fashionable strategy for states on the flimsiest excuses. They have been imposed in Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania and Queensland at short notice because of a handful of COVID-19 cases under the pretence of giving authorities time to properly understand new outbreaks. In hindsight, it is doubtful that any have had a meaningful impact on transmission of the virus, certainly not if any cost-benefit analysis had been taken into account. The evidence from Melbourne is that after enduring 111 days of lockdown last year it was a five-day lockdown from February 12 that broke the spirit of the city, from which it is yet to recover. Premiers have said lockdowns have been necessary because of new, more infectious variants of the virus. The lack of community spread of the new variants in Australia shows that this is not necessarily so. Nonetheless, premiers have been quick to trumpet success in keeping their citizens safe, and in Queensland and WA they have been well rewarded for it at the ballot box.

It is Canberra that has been called on to take responsibility for the economic cost of state decisions. Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has argued forcefully for the federal government to extend subsidies to travel and hospitality workers affected by the pandemic. But with JobKeeper ended she has been prepared to pull the rug from under business on the eve of one of the busiest trading periods of the year. Ms Palaszczuk argues she is following the advice of her medical experts, but good leadership requires a big-picture view and an ability to make tough decisions. NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has shown managing a small outbreak of COVID-19 is possible without resorting to widespread lockdowns. The Brisbane lockdown has already had a cascading affect that will hurt the airline and travel sectors. Other states have been quick to react, with hard borders imposed on Greater Brisbane by WA, Victoria, SA and Tasmania. Restrictions in NSW, logically, apply only to the venues to which COVID-19 cases have been linked.

Australia has a lot to celebrate in how it has managed the pandemic. Compared with millions of deaths around the world, Australia has had 29,276 cases and 909 deaths. The last of six COVID-19 deaths in Queensland was in April last year. On Monday, Australia had 154 active cases, mostly acquired overseas. The carriers were well contained in hotel quarantine. Seventy-seven people are in hospital with two, both in Queensland, needing intensive care. Despite the state actions, the financial response from the federal government has kept the economy primed and business confidence is returning. These measures have had a high financial cost. Lockdowns and controls by premiers who have not been paying the bills must stop. With a vaccine available and in production domestically, the best response now is to make sure all vulnerable people are protected. The urgency is not to lock things down but to speed up vaccines so business can be confident it will not be hostage to stop-start decisions from government, and citizens can plan their lives.