Morrison keeps Danbusters at bay over second coronavirus wave

The Premier wants to deal with the here and now, while trying to avoid the damaging distractions of responsibility.

Illustration: Tom Jellett

Australia’s economic, business, ­social and health recovery has been put back months — even years — as a result of Victoria’s second-wave coronavirus outbreak and the resulting draconian Mel­bourne lockdown.

The two events have spread COVID-19 infections to other states and added a new $12bn ­national economic hit, costing $15bn more in job support just this week, as well as threatening the unity of political leadership that is vital to public confidence.

It is what it is.

Since the pandemic began, 266 Australians have died from COVID-19. Of those, 181 were in Victoria where, on Friday, there were 450 new infections and 11 deaths, most in aged-care homes.

The commonwealth has spent more than $300bn to protect jobs, and the states $40bn. The projected budget surplus of $5bn for 2019-20 has turned to a projected $200bn deficit for 2020-21, and the national debt is heading towards a trillion dollars with unemployment well above 10 per cent.

Both Scott Morrison and Daniel Andrews have declared the coronavirus pandemic to be real, serious and the greatest challenge Australia has faced. They accept it’s their job to deal with the reality now and in the months ahead.

The Prime Minister and the state and territory leaders and the national cabinet all have their ­individual and collective responsibilities and, equally, their accountability for how they meet those responsibilities.

The shock of the new wave in Victoria has forced a reappraisal of Australia’s top-rating global position on both health and economic fronts, and has started to create political tensions and divisions where there were few at the start of the pandemic.

This is a tipping point for public trust and confidence in all governments and political leaders.

Morrison wants to keep public faith in the system, to avoid partisan clashes within the collective state and federal leadership of the national cabinet and criticism of those leaders, as well as drive home the point that the commonwealth “has come to the rescue” of the states, particularly Victoria.

He also pointed to commonwealth offers of help that have or have not been accepted, and made it clear that he and premiers, including Andrews in Victoria, will be accountable for mistakes and failures.

The Victorian Premier wants to deal with the here and now of the pandemic while trying to avoid the damaging distractions of responsibility for Australia’s second wave and the extra national economic burden and to restore confidence in his leadership.

The other state and territory leaders are maintaining a disciplined unity with Victoria — offering all sorts of assistance, while trying to protect their people from the new coronavirus outbreak and prop up their ailing economies with border closures.

Anthony Albanese has also seen the outbreak, particularly the large number of deaths in aged care homes, as a tipping point where he may, as Opposition Leader, leverage federal Labor back into political relevancy by creating divisions between Morrison and the states and blaming the federal Coalition for the deaths and economic carnage of the Victorian outbreak.

In six months, Australia has gone from being one of the best performers in containing the coronavirus pandemic — eliminating community transmission in large parts of the country and being able to wind back restrictions and re-open for business — to having a state with worse infection rates than developing African nations, business failures and hundreds of thousands of jobless.

There can be no putting the genie back in the bottle, or the coronavirus back into a Melbourne quarantine hotel. Australia still faces the greatest health threat in more than 100 years and the biggest debt, deficit, business losses and unemployment figures since the Great Depression and World War II.

The national psyche — most so in Melbourne — is battered and quashed, with dangerously rising levels of mental stress after the months of restrictions on work, school, social life, religious observance, aged care and freedom of movement — and the false dawn of successfully “flattening the curve” of community COVID-19 transmission.

But apart from confusion and anxiety, there is also a growing ­resentment and anger towards Andrews, not just in Victoria but nationally, over the origin of the second coronavirus outbreak and the necessity for the highest level of lockdown in Australia, which has shut Melbourne and crippled the Victoria economy, threatening to put hundreds of thousands out of work and destroy businesses.

The anger and resentment towards Andrews is coming from businesses and industries that feel they have been harshly treated in the lockdown restrictions — individuals who have lost liberty, relatives of coronavirus victims and political opponents.

There is no doubt that Victoria’s second wave, which has damaged the economy so profoundly and cut off hope of an early end to community transmission of coronavirus, came from the breaches of hotel quarantine in Melbourne and a failure in tracing and tracking infections. NSW, as result of infections from Victorians, has had to deal with six outbreaks since Victoria’s began and has managed to track and trace victims, keeping daily new cases between eight and 15 compared with Victoria’s peak of 752.

Frustration has grown with the Victorian Labor government as failings in aged-care reporting and refusal of hospitals to take coronavirus sufferers from aged-care homes became known. There has also been the critical growth of the dangerous “mysterious” cases that Victorian authorities have not been able to trace or get under control.

But this frustration and anger, aided by Albanese blaming Morrison for failing aged-care residents in Victoria and adding to deaths and economic loss for not introducing paid pandemic leave earlier, has spilled over to Morrison.

Labor has accused Morrison of “dithering” and being “indecisive” over aged care, job support and paid pandemic leave, and has not criticised Andrews at all.

Morrison, since day one of the national cabinet, has refused to criticise other leaders, Labor or Liberal, for mistakes or errors and has worked doggedly to keep the leadership group unified.

Friday’s was the 25th meeting of the newly formed national cabinet, and even against the background of the Victorian gov­ernment’s failures, Morrison — and Andrews — praised the unity and co-operation of all state and territory leaders.

“We spoke today about the importance of continuing to work together to provide the necessary supports to the economy,” Morrison said in Canberra after the virtual leadership meeting.

“While we are in these again very dark times, places we’re not unfamiliar with through this pandemic … governments are working together,” he said.

But despite the desire to maintain unity of federation leadership, Morrison is not blind to the political danger he faces from Albanese’s campaign to blame the commonwealth for the latest disaster in Victoria, and growing ­concern among Liberals who ­supported the early bipartisanship but are growing increasingly angry and frustrated at Andrews’s failings and don’t want Morrison to be part of a “mutual protection racket”.

Even as national cabinet met, Josh Frydenberg, as a Victorian, publicly expressed the frustration and anger of many Liberals with the state Labor government.

The Treasurer had been forced to intervene in consultations over the stage four restrictions on Victorian business and industry as the state government rushed through confused and at times chaotic rules on business, work and travel.

“What happened in quarantine were significant failures that cannot be repeated,” the Treasurer said on Friday.

“The emotional toll on Victorian families, on young women trying to home school their kids and hold down a job at the same time; on grandparents; on businesses that have had to close their doors with millions of people uncertain about their job future — they’re the real issues.

“I’ll let Daniel Andrews explain what happened on quarantine, that’s for him to explain, that’s for him to account for. But there’s no doubt there’s been mistakes made.”

Earlier that day, Peter Dutton said the quarantine breaches in Melbourne had not happened in other states and they were “failings around hotel quarantine arr­angements in Victoria”. On Thursday, Melbourne-based Assistant Treasurer Michael Sukkar said the Victorian government had to explain what had gone wrong.

Morrison refused to criticise Andrews, in keeping with his belief in national leadership unity, but his tone and emphasis on responsibility shifted at his press conference on Friday.

He declared that the Andrews government was solely responsible for restrictions in Victoria and that while the federal government could attempt to influence the ­restrictions through diplomacy, the “states have complete and total control”.

“The hard task this week following the Victorian government’s announcement of restrictions — which I understand there are many criticisms of and there’s confusion, I understand that — has been how to work drawing together the industry feedback,” Morrison said.

“But, ultimately, they’ll make the restrictions, they’ll enforce them and they are their calls.”

He did say the issue of quarantine security in the hotels was a state responsibility but he didn’t want to enter a partisan debate because it didn’t matter if you were a Liberal or Labor, the real task was to fight the pandemic.

“I don’t see a great advantage of engaging in that process in some sort of public spectacle. I don’t think that would be good for public confidence. I don’t think that would be good for public ­assurance,” he said.

“Regardless of which way you vote, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a Liberal supporter or a Labor supporter, the virus doesn’t discriminate and is seeking to cause its havoc wherever it can.

“So we need to continue to have a balanced response that looks at the economic and health issues,” he concluded.

So, Morrison is determined to put ­national unity above partisan or personality politics, including from Albanese, and wants to concentrate on the twin crises of the pandemic effects on health and the economy.

But he has demonstrated he is alert to the danger of political distractions and diversions, and what is clear — as Andrews said himself — is that “the buck stops” with the Victorian Premier.