Coronavirus: Time for business to make its move, says Frydenberg

Josh Frydenberg says business and industry chiefs must pressure states and territories to stick to the national cabinet’s reopening plan.

Josh Frydenberg says many businesses ‘are just holding on, with uncertainty hanging over their heads’. Picture: Gary Ramage

Josh Frydenberg says business and industry chiefs must “beat the drum” and pressure states and territories to stick to the national cabinet’s reopening plan, warning the $3bn-a-week hit to the economy was unsustainable.

As NSW, Victoria and the ACT battle to contain outbreaks of the Delta variant and Western Australia fractures from the ­national agreement, the Treasurer will issue a rallying cry on Monday for business leaders to make their “case for opening up”.

Writing in The Australian, Mr Frydenberg said many businesses “are just holding on, with uncertainty hanging over their heads”.

“They cannot plan a week, let alone a month ahead because they do not know whether the states and territories will stick to what was agreed at national cabinet,” Mr Frydenberg writes.

“With more than eight out of 10 Australians employed in the private sector, business has an ­important and powerful voice. Recent days have seen senior business leaders like Alan Joyce, Jennifer Westcott, Rob Scott, and Kerry Stokes calling for the economy to safely reopen.

“It is a vital message that needs to be repeated by them and ­others, again and again. With the vaccination targets now in sight, we need to hear more of it. It gives people hope and it holds governments at all levels and of all ­persuasions to account for their commitment to the plan.”

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian on Sunday announced a daily record of 1218 new cases and six deaths. Covid-19 cases in Victoria registered 93 cases, marking the state’s highest daily number of ­infections since September 3 last year, and the ACT reported 13 new Covid-19 cases.

As the Morrison government continued to reset the pandemic debate ahead of parliament ­returning on Monday, Mr Frydenberg said there were two reasons to end strict lockdowns and border closures when Australia reached the vaccine targets of 70 and 80 per cent: “our economy and people’s mental health”.

“One has a quantifiable financial cost, the other is harder to measure, but is even more ­important.

“If states and territories do not adhere to the plan agreed at national cabinet, the cost in terms of lives and livelihoods will be unacceptably and unnecessarily high,” he writes.

“Jobs will be lost. Businesses will close. The debt burden will rise. The wellbeing of Australians will suffer.”

Mr Frydenberg says the ­national accounts released on Wednesday, and dire forecasts for the September quarter, will ­“demonstrate the significant and detrimental impact the lockdowns are having on our economy”.

The Australian understands in a call with Scott Morrison on ­Saturday seeking assurances about vaccine supply for Victoria, Daniel Andrews expressed strong support for the national plan.

West Australian Premier Mark McGowan – who on Friday said he wouldn’t open up the state when the 70 per cent target was reached – slammed Mr Frydenberg for suggesting his resistance to dropping border restrictions would hurt the economy, arguing that people would die and the economy would suffer if the virus entered WA.

“What they don’t get in the NSW-Canberra bubble is that the industries in WA actually provide the economic strength of the country and the tax revenues that they pour into Sydney,” Mr McGowan said. “They need to open their eyes a bit and understand that there’s an Australia outside of Sydney and Canberra.”

Mr McGowan said that even at a 70 per cent vaccination rate, people would die if the virus infiltrated WA, given there would still be about one million unvaccinated people in the state at that time.

“If we bring down the border and allow anyone from NSW in, we will get infections and then we will have to put in place restrictions. We will have our hospitals fill up and if it runs wild, large numbers of people will die,” he said.

“So if anyone says the national plan is to allow hundreds of people to die and wreck your economy, I think they’re wrong.”

Mirroring the Prime Minister’s rhetoric, Mr Frydenberg says “we must learn to live with the virus in all aspects of our lives” and that “elimination is a fallacy and vaccines are the only answer”.

“The fact that kids in Victoria and NSW are not in school, where they can learn with their teachers and socialise with their friends, is having a profound impact on their behavioural development and educational outcomes,” he says.

Ahead of Friday’s national cabinet meeting, which will be dominated by analysis of Australia’s public hospital and health ­system capacity in dealing with cases when the country reopens, Ms Berejiklian pushed the cases for vaccinations, saying the “hospitalisation rate is declining”.

“People in intensive care would have been much larger had we not had a race on to vaccinate our population,” Ms Berejiklian said.

Health Minister Greg Hunt said the national plan would help “people to see their parents and grandparents, to attend weddings and funerals, to participate in the great events of life”.

Mr Hunt said there was no possibility that states could keep out the virus indefinitely.

“There is no scenario under which any credible epidemiologist or adviser that I have seen says that any country can avoid this forever. And so, therefore, vaccination will save lives. And I ­encourage everybody to continue to be vaccinated,” he said.

The Australian understands that Covid-free states outside Western Australia, including Tasmania, may be hesitant to open to NSW and Victoria if the states fail to contain worsening outbreaks of Delta before the 70 per cent vaccine threshold is reached.