A report in “Over Sixty” says that ABC’s 7:30 host Leigh Sales, who I admire greatly as a professional journalist and interviewer, wasn’t thrilled with the current Federal Budget and she grilled Treasurer Josh Frydenberg recently about the Federal Government’s range of budget “assumptions”.
Questioning Frydenberg Sales said, “The budget is based on a series of assumptions, and they are that the whole Australian population will be vaccinated by the end of the year, that there’ll be no sustained state border closures this year and no major COVID outbreaks, and that international borders will start to operate reasonably normally by the middle of next year,” adding, “Those are very uncertain and heroic assumptions, aren’t they?”
Frydenberg responded saying that the government is staying cautious due to the coronavirus pandemic, adding, “We’re in the middle of a pandemic, and making assumptions during normal times is difficult – to make them during the middle of a pandemic is even more so,” and “Those assumptions are based on the best available evidence to us.”
He said, “We know that more than 10% of the Australian population has now received their first dose”, adding, “We’ve seen 30% of those aged over 70 or above receive a dose”, and “We saw more than 400,000 doses rolled out over the course of the last week”, “More supply is coming online”, “ So that is the assumption about vaccines.”
In a GTM comment, it is interesting, but not surprising that Frydenberg did not comment about or even admit to what has clearly been the Federal Government’s disastrous failed vaccine rollout programme, which is actually the root cause of this issue, causing their claiming no international travel will take place until 2022!
Their ineptitude is further demonstrated by Frydenberg and Morrison and others not even able to agree on when in 2022, causing mass confusion, with Australia’s tourism industry warning the government that it is being crippled by uncertainty over when international borders will reopen, with industry body Tourism and Transport Forum [TTF] recently said the government’s failure to set a date for reopening the country’s international borders was “devastating” its recovery from the pandemic.
TTF CEO Margy Osmond said, “It’s not helpful to have a whole lot of different comments with different time frames and dates and different priorities around them in terms of when we’ll reopen to the rest of the world,” adding, “It’s devastating from a lack of certainty point of view”, and “We understand health must be the number one priority but what we need is some certainty around dates as far as possible”.
She added, “National cabinet needs to come up with a set series of dates so restrictions and border requirements can be lifted against the vaccination process.”
Scott Morrison has also said, by the way without canvassing or asking anyone, in another very dangerous assumption, that there was no “appetite” among Australians for the resumption of international travel, pledging that borders would re-open “when it is safe to do so”. Did he ask you or me if we had any appetite for international travel? I don’t think so!
In the meantime, the Federal Government’s ineptitude continued with Finance Minister Simon Birmingham, who served as minister for tourism from August 2018 until December 2020, entering the fray jumping in with both feet, saying Australians should not expect significant movement on borders “until into next year and probably some distance into next year”. Another classic piece of guesswork and ineptitude!
Back to Frydenberg about the vaccine rollout, saying, “It’s been a slow start to the national vaccination program, with numbers trailing behind what’s required”, but he failed to be honest by admitting that the Federal Government “stuffed up” and there is not other word for it, the vaccine rollout, with if they had not “stuffed it up” both inbound and outbound international travel would be happening much sooner than they estimate!
This blatant ineptitude does seriously question this government’s management of the COVID-19 pandemic, with at least in the early stages it appears they did “the right things”, but laterally as other countries are getting on with life, Australia is increasingly lagging behind, becoming the butt of humour around the world as an “island prison”, with in addition inbound and outbound travel and tourism continue to collapse…and all due to the Federal Government’s ineptitude.
An opinion and report by John Alwyn-Jones Special Correspondent Travel and Tourism
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