PM’s bold gamble could lock in the election

Scott Morrison in question time this week. Picture: Gary Ramage

It will be very hard for Scott Morrison to win next year’s election if the Covid crisis is not substantially resolved because campaigning around restrictions would be an admission of failure.

Actually, it was always going to be hard to win, given the Coalition is seeking a fourth term while defending a paper-thin majority and facing an adverse redistribution, plus strong and aggressive Labor governments in the key states of Western Australia and Queensland. But by finally moving to take on the lockdown-addicted Labor premiers this week, the Prime Minister at last has given himself a fighting chance.

As Malcolm Turnbull discovered in 2016, elections are contests, not coronations. You don’t win by minimising differences with the other side and expecting to be rewarded for past achievements. You win only when you’re able to persuade voters that, on balance, their lives will be better with you and your party in government. Having invented the so-called national cabinet at the start of the pandemic to play himself into the formulation and co-ordination of public health policy, it’s understandable that Morrison felt obliged to minimise friction with the Labor premiers, even when they played fast and loose with national cabinet decisions.

In the acute phase of this crisis, voters would not have rewarded rank politicking, so he was right to build bridges, not burn them. But as the harm from lockdowns grew and the Covid cure became worse than the disease, giving up the mantle of national leader to become a mere chairman of a Covid co-ordinating council has come at a cost to Morrison’s standing in the polls and his character in the eyes of the electorate.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison with state and territory premiers at National Cabinet. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

With close to 15 million Australians under virtual house arrest, and with everyone else’s lives subject to instant up-ending at the first sign of an outbreak, cynically opportunistic Labor premiers successfully have pinned the blame on Morrison (personally, not just the federal government) for not rolling out the vaccine fast enough. It’s not their fault people are locked up, they’ve said, but the Prime Minister’s for not giving them any alternative.

But with the vaccine rollout now gathering speed, and with NSW, especially, well on track to hit 70 per cent double-jabbed within two months, the Labor premiers may have overplayed their hand. Certainly, Anthony Albanese now fears that, hence Wednesday’s sudden conversion to the Doherty Institute’s formula for opening up. Provided he holds his nerve, Morrison has a window to change the contest from an argument over how well he has managed the rollout to an argument over who wants to keep us locked up more or less forever.

Don’t be surprised if the federal Opposition Leader goes to the election saying he wants the lockdowns ended as quickly as possible, even while Labor premiers continue to impose them. Labor is more than capable of playing a ruthless political double game, especially in those states that have had their elections safely out of the way – and blaming the PM for the confusion.

Until last weekend, it has been hard to tell that Morrison is a Liberal prime minister, at least from his handling of the pandemic.

In terms of the initial lockdowns nationally and the pre-vaccine Victorian second wave, he probably didn’t have much choice but to support restrictions and to pay for their economic consequences – despite the obvious clash with the normal Liberal instinct for smaller government and greater freedom.

But even after the national cabinet had agreed on a plan out of restrictions – essentially to end statewide lockdowns once vaccination reached 70 per cent and to end state border closures once vaccinations reached 80 per cent – Morrison stayed a lockdown supporter, with his initial response to the current NSW second wave almost falling into a tautology: “If you’re in a lockdown, the lockdown has to work.”

But that all seemed to change last weekend. Last Sunday, Morrison declared in a newspaper column that “a one-eyed focus on just case numbers overlooks the fact that (fewer) people are getting seriously ill, let alone dying” thanks to vaccines. He went on: “These lockdowns are imposing a heavy toll. They are sadly necessary for now … but they won’t be necessary for too much longer.”

Since then, with ever-greater clarity and vigour, he has been stressing that we will have to “live with Covid”, including some hospitalisations and deaths; and putting himself increasingly at odds with the Labor premiers who still insist that, for opening up, it’s necessary that the virus be “crushed and killed”.

It’s now pretty clear that in NSW at least, from the end of October when vaccination hits 70 per cent, businesses will reopen, some school classes will resume and restrictions will be minimal. Well before that, it’s likely that the double-jabbed will get some relief from stay-at-home orders. It’s also pretty clear that in Victoria, under the world’s harshest lockdown, where even sunset-watching is verboten, without a return to Covid zero there’ll be no release from house arrest until vaccination rates reach at least 80 per cent.

Given the Labor premiers’ fixation on Covid zero, unless NSW gets to 80 per cent vaccination and also eliminates the virus, it’s all but certain that Queensland, WA and Victoria will keep their borders shut tight.

In fact, the Labor states are trying to retrofit the national cabinet decision to add a new require­ment for opening up: not just 70 per cent-plus vaccination but zero Covid, too – even though the decision was based on Doherty Institute modelling that was quite specific that high levels of vaccination could not be expected to prevent more than 100 hospitalisations and more than 10 deaths a day on average due to Covid, around Australia.

The Labor premiers are obviously revelling in a spotlight that state leaders haven’t had for a generation. As long as they can maintain a sense of crisis, they keep their opposition marginalised and public concerns muted about all other policy failures and budget spending. They also know the federal government is held to a higher standard than they are.

It won’t be enough for Morrison to exploit the politics of this crisis as they have. He’ll have to fix it, even though so much of the politics of it is outside his control.

The Labor premiers will continue to make opening up all about risks to health from Covid spreading through the community. By contrast, Morrison needs to make it all about risks to mental health and jobs from Covid restrictions staying in place.

But it won’t be enough for Morrison merely to side with voters increasingly demanding their lives back. As the country’s paramount leader, he will be expected to deliver; to make the national cabinet decision, for once, actually stick; and the only lever he has is financial.

Within a few months of the federal election, could Morrison credibly threaten Queensland and Western Australia with funding cuts if they don’t stick to the national cabinet plan for reopening? If it’s a matter of political life or death, maybe he could. That would require a level of steel from him not seen since, as Tony Abbott’s border minister, he helped to stop the boats.

Peta Credlin is host of Credlin on Sky News, 6pm weeknights.