Scott Morrison sets a goal of 16.8m shots to Covid-19 freedom

Goal revealed to fully vaccinate a further 10.7 million Australians by the end of the year under a national reopening plan.

Scott Morrison in Canberra after Friday’s national cabinet meeting. Picture: Martin Ollman

Scott Morrison has set a goal to fully vaccinate a further 10.7 million Australians by the end of the year under a national reopening plan that will reduce restrictions for inoculated residents, ­resume some international travel and make lockdowns less likely.

Following a marathon national cabinet meeting on Friday, the Prime Minister unveiled a new four-phase national plan that sets a vaccine coverage target of 70 per cent before the country can move out of the current suppression phase.

With more than 3.7 million people already fully vaccinated, a further 10.7 million will have to ­receive both jabs to reach the ­target of 70 per cent of all Australians eligible for the vaccine, or 14.4 million people.

A further 16.8 million vaccine doses will be required to hit the 70 per cent target.

The reopening blueprint, based on health and economic modelling provided by the Doherty ­Institute and Treasury, outlines four stages ending in a post-­vaccination phase where Australians live with Covid-19 in a similar way to influenza.

The Weekend Australian ­understands there will be enough supply to jab all eligible Australians twice before the end of the year and the federal government is increasingly confident it can hit 80 per cent coverage by December, advancing the country to the third phase of the plan.

Under phase three, there will be targeted lockdowns in exceptional scenarios, restrictions on vaccinated Australians will be ­lifted, new travel bubbles opened and caps increased for student, economic and humanitarian visa holders.

In the fourth phase, uncapped international travel will resume with quarantine reserved for high-risk travellers and vaccine boosters provided as necessary.

Mr Morrison, who said that within days vaccinated people would have a digital wallet recording their inoculations, said travellers coming into the country would need to be vaccinated with a dose “recognised in Australia”.

“By the time we get to that stage, digital vaccination certificates for many nations will ­already be in place,” he said. ­“Indeed for Australia it will be in place.”

On the back of another day of record vaccinations that pushed national vaccine coverage to 18.24 per cent, Mr Morrison said he was confident the nation could hit 70 per cent by December.

“I believe we can get this done but it’s not something that any one government, any one vaccination clinic, any one Australian can achieve on their own – it’s done as a team effort,” he said.

Industry groups questioned the reality of hitting a 70 per cent vaccine rate by December and warned that until the next phases of the national plan were unlocked, business would need to “brace itself for disruption for at least the next six months”.

The in-principle agreement struck by federal, state and territory leaders on Friday does not include specific timelines and will require Australia-wide average vaccination rates to reach 70 and 80 per cent before any one jurisdiction can move to the next step.

Mr Morrison said the national plan would “chart the way back” out of the suppression phase, currently dominated by the extended lockdown in NSW and avoiding outbreaks of the more contagious Delta strain.

“Under this plan, no state or territory is required to increase the restrictions beyond where they are right now. They are a matter for them to set based on the balance of risk that they see in their state or territory,” Mr Morrison said. “There is no state or jurisdiction in the country that wants to apply a lockdown or hold Australians back should it not be necessary. What the modelling … showed us was that when you get to that 70 per cent level you have achieved a level of coverage which enables you to then ease into that process.”

He said the national plan was “not about freedom days”.

“We have made our own Australian way through this,” he said. “Sure, we’ve acted with a lot of caution. That’s why there are 30,000 Australians today who are still alive because of that and the decisions that we’ve taken.

“We don’t go from shut one day, open the next. That is a very dangerous path. What we need to do is take steps towards that – sensible, cautious steps. We get to 70 per cent. So let’s get there and then we get to 80 per cent and we make that work and then we get to the next level.”

West Australian Premier Mark McGowan said the 70 per cent target was “fairly modest”, flagging the more significant change would come with the third phase, which requires an 80 per cent threshold. “In any event, the exact criteria within each of the phases isn’t resolved as yet,” he said. “Some are agreed but not all, and a range of states and territories will work on that over the coming weeks to nail that down. We do need a road map, we need to understand what the plan is.”

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said the in-­principle agreement was to achieve 70 and 80 per cent vaccine coverage before states could move to “more limited lockdowns … when needed”. “In the meantime with the threat of variants like Delta we still maintain a strategy of hard and fast lockdowns because they are so fast moving,” she said.

Australian Industry Group chief executive Innes Willox said business needed to brace itself for disruption for at least the next six months while lockdowns were a component of “formal national policy”. “We need a formal end point for this disruption no matter the take-up rate,” he said. “Once everyone eligible has been ­offered a vaccine we need to move to the next phase and not be held hostage to vaccine hesitancy and opposition.

“Our economic recovery depends on all our leaders sticking by their agreements, something they have found impossible to abide by to this point.”

With more than one billion doses of AstraZeneca now supplied globally, Mr Morrison urged Australians to book an appointment for the jab as the domestic take-up of the vaccine increased. “If you want to get vaccinated, the AZ vaccine is there for you. It is a highly effective vaccine,” he said.

Additional reporting: Paul Garvey, Michael McKenna