When Covid going got tough, the states stepped up

Long thought to be in retreat, Australia’s handling of the pandemic crisis showed federalism is alive and well.

Scott Morrison holds a national cabinet meeting with State leaders in August. Picture: Adam Taylor/PMO

With 2020 out of the way (thank gawd) we can reflect on the political leaders we have to thank for how well Australia managed the pandemic. As awful as the year was, compared with other parts of the world Australia has excelled, notwithstanding stumbles along the way.

The premiers as a collective have done better than anyone federally. That’s important to note. They were the ones who initially dragged the federal government, kicking and screaming behind the scenes, over the line to lock down and ensure COVID-19 didn’t spread through the community the way it did in other parts of the world.

However much Scott Morrison is lauded now for his performance during the pandemic, and he does deserve some applause, when the premiers were issuing cautions he was spruiking his desire to attend the footy one last time before restrictions came in.

When state chief health officers were advising their premiers last March that social distancing restrictions might be necessary, the federal chief medical officer rocked up at the ABC Insiders studio shaking hands. Doing so might have been safe because community transmission was low at the time, but it didn’t set the right example.

Make no mistake, state governments stepped up when Australians needed them to.

As part of researching for our forthcoming book, How Good is Scott Morrison?, Wayne Errington and I discovered that early on members of federal cabinet were arguing for a Donald Trump style laissez-faire approach to the virus. All will be revealed when we publish in April.

Premiers took a different view, effectively forcing the Prime Minister into what could have been a humiliating backdown from his initially lax approach. To Morrison’s credit, he saw the writing on the wall and got on board, projecting unity, albeit reluctantly. Who knew the federation was so powerful?

That was another revelation during this pandemic: federalism is alive and well. Long thought to be in retreat in recent decades, the power of state governments has been glaringly on display throughout the pandemic.

At the federal level the two ministers who deserve the most credit for Australia’s record, joining the premiers as deserving of our praise, are Josh Frydenberg and Health Minister Greg Hunt.

Neither was particularly close to Morrison at the beginning of the pandemic, but by the end of it they were invaluable to both the Prime Minister and the nation. They gave Morrison much needed policy ballast last year.

Few realise how hard Hunt worked behind the scenes stockpiling equipment for emergency departments to ensure Australia was well placed when it came to ventilators and masks in the event COVID-19 got out of control.

Equally, the Treasurer was a driving force behind the rollout of payments that saved jobs and businesses. People can condemn his over-the-top criticisms of Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews (as I do), or his structuring of JobKeeper and JobSeeker (which did leave some people behind). But Frydenberg was a Liberal Treasurer who rolled out an agenda that was very different from his ideological beliefs.

Coalition colleagues didn’t always agree with the strict health measures and profligate spending. Neither did reactionary commentators who often have more opinions than brains. But without Hunt and Frydenberg the health crisis could have been much worse and the long-term economic recovery could have been far slower and more painful. Frydenberg sought John Howard’s advice throughout the crisis, which helped him stand his ground in cabinet when his suggestions were challenged — including by the Prime Minister.

If the end-of-year financial update proves accurate, the unemployment rate won’t rise beyond 7.5 per cent. That is extraordinary given the damage the pandemic caused. Initial estimates were for more than 10 per cent unemployment.

Victoria’s second wave was devastating for many, but even with that failure added into the mix, Australia is a world leader on health outcomes.

Hunt and Frydenberg, who squared off for the deputy leadership of the Liberal Party when Malcolm Turnbull and Julie Bishop departed, are close friends. A pair of Victorians — Bill Lawry would be proud.

Morrison doesn’t get close to his parliamentary colleagues. Apart from Stuart Robert — who shares Morrison’s Pentecostal faith — the Prime Minister has no other real friends in the parliamentary ranks. He’s close to Alex Hawke and Ben Morton, but these relationships are transactional as factional and strategic allies.

This time 12 months ago the government looked like the dog that caught the car, unsure what to do with the third term it had secured a little more than seven months earlier. Morrison had recently returned from the US, where he’d joined Donald Trump on stage at a campaign rally. The Prime Minister was taking his lead from a President who proved incapable of winning re-election.

There was little by way of an agenda domestically, and Morrison looked like damaged goods as bushfires raged. He was exposed as a blame shifter, having returned from an overseas holiday he had secretly embarked on while his home state, NSW, burned. He looked sorry for himself, deeply un-prime ministerial.

The level of animosity between Morrison and NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian was off the charts. The optics of their collegial relationship now paper over those tensions. Perhaps one day the full details of what transpired between the pair during the bushfires and in the early days of the pandemic when Berejiklian sided with Labor premiers will be revealed.

But the COVID crisis saved Morrison’s bacon, and he is now invincible in what may turn out to be an election year. He can’t lose the next election. He has Labor’s measure. The good work managing the pandemic, however, is shared by others: premiers, Frydenberg and Hunt. Even if Morrison gets most of the credit as Prime Minister.

While the lead indicators are that this will be a better year, the effects of COVID-19 are far from over. Australia continues to face threats of community outbreaks, with current clusters in Victoria and NSW. Travel internationally remains largely off limits, and interstate borders remain largely shut. So much depends on the success of the vaccines.

When JobKeeper ends in March, the unemployment rate will rise, even if the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook forecasts are accurate and it doesn’t lift beyond 7.5 per cent. And then we have the risks attached to our trade relationship with China.

If the economy does recover well, inflation could become a risk. Higher inflation would mean higher interest rates. It would be ironic if a strong recovery out the other side of the recession became a bigger economic problem than the downturn itself. We have seen how problematic, politically speaking, rising interest rates have been in the past for governments.

Last year was certainly one to forget, but there are no guarantees that this year will be one to be remembered.

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