The biggest failure has been rhetorical: over-promising and under-delivering

Members of the public queue outside at a mass Covid-19 vaccination hub at Sydney’s Olympic Park. Picture: NCA NewsWire

False equivalence is often used as a strategy by ideological opponents to criticise their enemies. The method involves using a logical fallacy to compare and contrast unreasonably. Apples and oranges, as they say.

There has been plenty of that when it comes to the supposedly disgracefully low vaccination rates in Australia. But let’s test that.

If you compare how Australia is going with like for like nations, it’s not as simple as being wholly critical of the government. Albeit noting that, yes, of course the rollout could and should be better.

Firstly, the United States and European Union produce the Pfizer vaccine, so it’s entirely understandable their rates of first doses sit at roughly double those in Australia. We have now passed 30 per cent of eligible Australians receiving a first dose. Most European nations as well as the US are well ahead of that. But it is worth noting not all European nations are.

Because the US and EU produce the Pfizer vaccine, and they were ravaged by Covid-19, fast tracking approval processes to urgently get jabs into arms was something they had to do and were able to do. We didn’t need to do that, so our rollout started later, once proper approvals had occurred.

Surely risk averse Australians can see the upside of such caution at the time? Imagine what the critics would have said if we rushed approvals when the threat of Covid was low and complications from vaccines followed.

If you compare Australia’s vaccination rate now to other nations that have also successfully managed the pandemic, we suddenly don’t look so bad.

More Australians as a percentage of the population have had the jab than New Zealanders have. Roughly double. Taiwan’s vaccination rate is much worse than ours. South Korea and Japan’s rates are similar to Australia’s.

Critics also like to point to our low second doses percentages, down at nine per cent. But because the majority of Australians who have had the jab have received the AstraZeneca jab, which has a 12 week wait between first and second doses, comparing second jab rates to nations getting other vaccines with three week turnarounds (like Pfizer has) is comparing apples and oranges. It’s false equivalence.

But facts like these don’t matter to ideological opponents of the Morrison government who are hell bent on making polemic points. Willing to do so armed with the tools of false equivalence.

They equally like to ignore understandable bad luck calls made early on in the pandemic. We backed the University of Queensland vaccine. Of course we did: buy Australian and all of that. Can you imagine the criticism the government would have received had we not supported a home grown vaccine. Unfortunately it fell over during trials.

We also strongly backed AstraZeneca, which despite the naysayers continues to do the lion’s share of the work globally. It was developed and manufactured in the UK, and Australia had facilities capable of producing it here. Of course we therefore ordered up big and put plans in place to make it ourselves.

Unfortunately rare blood clotting saw medical advice limit age groups who should get it as the preferred vaccine, hampering the rollout in the process. That also gave the naysayers exactly what they needed – something to criticise.

But these decisions weren’t examples of poor choices. Bad luck was the dominant mistake.

To be sure, we should have begun plans to build MRNA capable vaccine facilities here much earlier. We probably shouldn’t have let price point dissuade us from purchasing other vaccines just to be safe. In case we ended up where we have ended up. And purpose-built quarantine facilities could have been built along time ago. That more than anything else is a clear cut failure by the government.

The biggest failure has been rhetorical: over-promising and under-delivering alongside mixed messages undermining confidence. Remember all those media conferences grandstanding that we were at the front of the queue and bragging about the millions of vaccines coming our way? No wonder so many people just assumed a full rollout would be a breeze.

So yes, the government has made mistakes, including some howlers. But for the love of god can critics draw breath and be reasonable, rather than using errors simply to settle old scores. Calling the rollout the biggest public policy failure in Australian history, or demanding the health minister resign because of it, is utter nonsense.

Unless false equivalence is the mantra.

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Peter van Onselen is a professor of politics and public policy at the University of Western Australia and Griffith University