The buck on quarantine stops with the commonwealth

The party that built its reputation on border control has wriggled off the hook, allowing state premiers to take the fall.

Illustration: Tom Jellett

While there has been an understandable focus this week on the depth of the recession and the historically high levels of debt and deficit, these are to a significant extent unavoidable consequences of the pandemic. To be sure, the economic fallout has been global.

The twin avoidable conseq­uences of the pandemic, however — both of which have been the difference between Australia eliminating the virus and suppressing it (the latter only if we are lucky now) — are the Ruby Princess debacle and the hotel quarantine failures out of Victoria.

Without either of these setbacks Australia could be in the equally enviable position New Zealand is in, celebrating having eradicated the virus from our shores, with hugs and kisses all around, and able to begin the process of reviving the economy.

While most of the media coverage has laid the blame for the Ruby Princess and hotel quarantine mistakes at the feet of the respective state governments in NSW and Victoria, the fact is both failures firmly rest at the feet of the federal government — notwithstanding acknowledged mistakes made by the states.

Simply put, the Australian Border Force is in charge of incoming arrivals, with the commonwealth given constitutionally articulated responsibility for quarantining. The Constitution, in section 51 (IX), lays out in black and white that the commonwealth, not the states, has oversight for quarantine. It is the basis for the Quarantine Act, which has not been legally challenged since 1908, including during the 1919 pandemic. We also now have the Biosecurity Act (2015), which provides extremely broad powers, and it mandates that commonwealth powers supersede those of the states.

Whatever mistakes state authorities may have made, it is the commonwealth that is charged with securing our borders. It had the power to deny the Ruby Princess access. It didn’t. It is charged with responsibility for quarantining, but via the national cabinet Scott Morrison handballed that responsibility to the premiers.

Can you imagine how sections of the media and the Coalition federally would have reacted if these twin failures had occurred on the watch of a federal Labor government? How targeted they would have been at the maladministra­tion coming out of Canberra, at the failure of the commonwealth to take charge in a national crisis?

As opposition immigration spokesman Morrison would have sheeted the blame home to the Labor federal government, just as he did so effectively when refugee boats were arriving during the governments of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard. Morrison would have attacked Labor for not restricting the access of the cruise ship. We know the ABF was on the vessel but didn’t prevent it from docking and disembarking. Morrison would have attacked federal Labor for not retaining responsibility for international arrivals going into quarantine. Morrison even might have accused federal Labor of being soft on border security if it hadn’t insisted international arrivals during the pandemic go into deten­tion centres scattered around the country and lying dormant; if it hadn’t insisted the military be used to oversee such operations, because a crisis requires firm action. I’m not saying doing so would have been fair and reasonable but that is how hard the Coalition plays its politics. And it would have been rewarded for doing so.

In comparison, federal Labor doesn’t have the cutthroat capacity to serve up the same criticisms of Morrison’s government.

Instead, the Prime Minister is flying high in the opinion polls, likely to sidestep any conseq­uences for the economic fallout because of seemingly entrenched voter attitudes that conservatives are better economic managers. Able to abdicate responsibility for international arrivals and border control, pushing the responsibility on to the states.

Yet all I read and hear about are the failures of Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews because he let security guards, not police or the military, look after hotel quarantine. And before that the failures of NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian for not preventing sick passengers disembarking the Ruby Princess at the beginning of this pandemic.

These are the responsibilities of the national government, not the states. As much as we can all agree state maladministration — once power was abdicated to them — caused the twin crisis. How ironic that the party that built its reputation on “stopping the boats” failed to stop the one boat that really mattered, the Ruby Princess. Or that a command-and-control leader such as Morrison is happy to hand over quarantining oversight when the Constitution dictates that it is an area of public policy he is firmly in charge of.

Don’t get me wrong, I thoroughly applaud the Prime Minister’s ability to manoeuvre his way politically out of trouble on these failuress — by abdicating responsibility rather than delegating it.

The fingerprints of failure by the commonwealth are nowhere to be seen, leaving state governments to wear the odium for mistakes made. Full credit to the strategic political skills of Morrison’s inner sanctum, taking advantage of the profound political weakness of federal Labor to muscle up on these issues. Ensuring a well-briefed mainstream media knows who to blame. Especially the narrative that quarantine failures in Victoria are the fault of the Premier when the Constitution clearly stipulates quarantining is a federal responsibility.

As we watch the disaster in Victoria continue to unfold, readers should remember that for years federal politicians of all stripes have complained about the quality of personnel who choose careers in state politics.

This has been especially prevalent on the right of politics, where overseeing service delivery at the state level isn’t seen to be as important or grandiose as serving at the national level, calling those who enter state politics the “second XI” or the “also-rans”. Yet here we are, at a time of national crisis no less, and we are supposed to accept that it is OK for a federal government with unequivocal powers over borders and quarantine to abdicate these responsibilities to so-called second-rate administrators?

If that isn’t a dereliction of duty I don’t know what is.

Peter van Onselen is political editor at the Ten Network and a professor of politics and public policy at the University of Western Australia and Griffith University.