We must live with coronavirus, says Bill Shorten, as Labor MPs signal shift on reopening
Bill Shorten and Joel Fitzgibbon have backed an end to lockdowns when vaccination rates hit 80 per cent despite Anthony Albanese telling caucus the premiers could use them
Senior Labor MPs Bill Shorten and Joel Fitzgibbon have backed an end to lockdowns when vaccination rates hit 80 per cent despite Anthony Albanese telling caucus the premiers could use them in “highly targeted” situations under the national plan.
The stance from Mr Shorten and Mr Fitzgibbon increases the pressure on Mr Albanese to endorse a specific target for the ending of restrictions as Labor premiers in Queensland and Western Australia push back against Scott Morrison’s call for states to reopen once 80 per cent of the nation is fully vaccinated.
Mr Albanese also labelled the Prime Minister’s handling of the vaccination rollout a “clusterf..k” in Tuesday’s caucus briefing, arguing that — while he supported the national plan — targeted lockdowns might still be needed at 70 and 80 per vaccination rates.
But Mr Shorten, Labor leader from 2013-19, said Australians needed to live in a post-lockdown world, “which means that Covid will be in the community”, and that he thought the top threshold recommended by the Doherty Institute of 80 per cent was acceptable for ending lockdowns.
Mr Shorten also said other measures had to be taken as restrictions eased and that Mr Morrison’s target of 70 per cent of adults was “imprecise”.
“To open safely, it’s about reaching high enough vaccine coverage plus focusing on other measures such as adequate ventilation, masks, third booster doses for health workers, and vaccinating children,” he told The Australian. “It can’t just be Scott Morrison’s imprecise 70 per cent of adults because it doesn’t include children. We have to protect kids as well as adults.”
Mr Fitzgibbon told 2GB radio states should open when vaccination rates reached the 70 and 80 per cent threshold.
“We just can’t keep locking down forever. We’ll have more deaths by suicide than by Covid-19 if we keep doing so and people, particularly people in business, have to know there’s an endpoint,” he said. “They’re on their knees but … if they know they only need to just survive until December 1, for example, whatever the date might be, then they probably will hang on.
“But if you don’t give them any sort of hope, then you’re going to lose more and more people and more and more jobs. There’s a certain point we need to put these long-protracted lockdowns behind us. It’s killing the economy and it’s killing our people.”
In Tuesday morning’s caucus meeting, Mr Albanese said Labor supported the national four-stage plan towards living with Covid that was endorsed by national cabinet in July.
He accused Mr Morrison of misleading Australians about the content of the plan.
Mr Albanese read from the plan to Labor MPs, saying the agreement stated lockdowns were possible but less likely to occur when vaccination rates reached 70 per cent.
He said phase C of the plan, when vaccination rates reached 80 per cent, “still refers to highly targeted lockdowns”.
“Mr Morrison is pretending that the report says that at 70 per cent there is no lockdowns, which is not what it says,” Mr Albanese said in caucus. “Mr Morrison desperately wants an argument where he is pro-freedom and everyone else is against that.”
Labor health spokesman Mark Butler said he was not going to take a lecture from “the guy (Mr Morrison) who put us in the f..king cave in the first place”.
In a press conference after the virtual caucus meeting, Mr Butler: “We support the idea that we get vaccination rates up to a point where we can see life starting to return to normal. Australians need an end to these constant debilitating lockdowns.”
When asked if governments should be gearing towards a no-lockdown future after vaccination rates of 80 per cent, Mr Butler said “of course”.
Hitting back against claims Labor was undermining the plan, Mr Butler said the opposition was merely demanding the Prime Minister provide assurances the testing, contact tracing and quarantine systems were able to cope without lockdowns. He also said there needed to be clarity on how 12 to 16-year-olds fitted into the plan, arguing the government should at the very least provide a timeline on when that age group would be fully vaccinated.
“We need to make sure we move to those phases safely, not recklessly,” he said. “We need to make sure our tracing, testing and other systems are robust enough to prevent thousands and thousands of additional hospitalisations, and hundreds and hundreds of additional deaths that the Doherty Institute say would happen if those testing systems are not up to scratch.”
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