The premiers continue to run their agendas. And the premiers are divided. On a bleak Sunday NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian admitted reality, saying it was “not possible” to eliminate Covid cases, while West Australian Premier Mark McGowan boasted that even at 80 per cent vaccination, his goal would still be “zero” cases and he would attempt to achieve that.
Sydney and Perth are divided by more than the Nullarbor; they have different Covid experiences and have conflicting views on the national cabinet opening-up strategy that Scott Morrison worked long and hard to secure.
Berejiklian’s aim is to find a “normal” life by vaccination – living with the virus, its cases and its deaths, restoring freedoms and economic life. Yet McGowan’s post-vaccination goal is a virus free utopia, guaranteed to be wildly popular in the West.
The biggest threat to Morrison’s 70-80 per cent nationwide strategy is Berejiklian’s inability to contain the Delta variant. If NSW still has hundreds of cases when it reaches the 70 per cent vaccine threshold other premiers will simply refuse to open in unison with NSW. Any national reopening strategy will be fatally compromised. A chaotic situation will unfold.
Beyond the NSW problem is the opposing problem of McGowan’s contradictory vision. McGowan, like all three ALP premiers, attacks Berejiklian’s lockdown as too weak and says her remarks about opening threaten the national cabinet decision. Yet it is McGowan who trashes the spirit and purpose of the national cabinet agenda while upholding its letter.
The entire purpose of the four stage 70-80 per cent vaccination plan, based on Doherty Institute modelling, is to move Australia as one nation across all states and territories into an easing of restrictions, lockdowns and closed borders by accepting that Covid cases will exist but that hospitalisation and deaths can be managed as the nation learns to live with the virus.
This is Morrison’s mantra. It is what the Doherty modelling sought to achieve. Yet McGowan in his SkyNews interview on Sunday had different goals. He will remain a zero-Covid premier despite any 80 per cent stellar vaccine rate, ready to resort to whatever powers are needed from lockdowns to border closures because the West “can’t run the risk” of being infiltrated by Delta.
McGowan will be cheered at home. But for most states, NSW being the most obvious, total elimination is not tenable. Berejiklian intends significant easing at the 70 per cent and 80 per cent thresholds. That means living with cases in the community and seeking a return to some form of freedom normality.
If McGowan is serious, then Australia risks a “two nation” fate divided by the Nullarbor, with contested methods of coping with Covid in late 2021 and possibly running far into 2022.
When pressed about fighting Covid, McGowan said “some” measures “might ease” in WA at the high vaccination levels. This premier is not for turning.
Reinforcing the west’s separate path is its dismal vaccination rate. On first jabs NSW scores 51 per cent compared with WA’s 41.6 per cent, while on both jabs NSW rates at 26.5 per cent compared with WA at 22.5 per cent.
The West’s figures are alarming in their own right, suggesting a distinct lack of urgency.
They are doubly alarming because the national cabinet plan says the transition from one stage to the next depends upon two conditions: the vaccination target being reached nationally and in each jurisdiction. There seems no escape.
The premiers are running the show with likely alarming consequences for our unity, our cohesion and our national economy.
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Australia’s hopes of sticking by a national plan at 70-80 per cent vaccination to open the economy, the internal borders and ease restrictions are being torn apart.