A Sydney Morning Herald Report says that NSW Treasurer Dominic Perrottet has warned vaccine targets linked to the reopening of borders are crucial to reassuring the community and business that Australia will not be closed forever, with Mr. Perrottet, who has been critical of the federal government’s timeframe after last week’s budget assumed international borders will stay shut until mid-2022, saying clear goals needed to be set.
Mr. Perrottet told the Herald in comments likely to put further pressure on the federal government, saying, “A vaccine target that we can work towards will give business and community confidence that we will not be closed off to the world indefinitely,”
Mr. Perrottet’s stance follows comments made by Dr. Nick Coatsworth, Australia’s former deputy chief medical officer, at a speech at the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons annual scientific meeting last week the “false idol” of COVID-19 eradication could not be maintained indefinitely and the nation must become “prepared and comfortable” for the virus to spread, adding, “At a point in the future when a significant majority of our community is vaccinated, there will be pressure to open our borders”, and “We must not resist that”, adding, “In fact, when the time is right, we should be leading the calls for it.”
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Sunday the country could not use vaccinations alone as a reason for reopening its borders, saying, “Even in that circumstance, you’re still talking about millions of Australians who wouldn’t have been vaccinated because a, they’re children orb, they’ve chosen not to be,”
In the meantime, one wonders if Dr. Coatsworth has subsequently come under political or government pressure or in the vernacular has he been “got at”, because by today in an interview on Today he had rather changed his tune an opinion!
Dr. Coatsworth now says that Australia will likely begin a “slow methodical and safe opening” of its international borders in the first half of 2022, and denied he was in conflict with Prime Minister Scott Morrison over a timeline for opening borders for international travel.
He said, “When you put your head up over the trench this is what happens,” describing the reaction to his recent comments about smashing the “false idol” of COVID-19 eradication in Australia, then adding, in what appears to be his stunning change of heart and opinion, he was in “100 percent agreement” with Mr. Morrison, adding, as if to ameliorate his very strange about-turn, “It was important to now start a conversation about how Australians will travel in 2022”.
He also added, “What do we do when the majority of Australians are vaccinated and immune, safe from hospitalisation, safe from death from COVID-19 but there are still critical events going on that people want to attend around the world?”, adding “Do we still put them in hotel quarantine in 2022 at their expense?”
He also said, “The best way to make people feel more comfortable about COVID-19 is get vaccinated”.
Methinks he has been “got at”!
With Australia’s vaccine rollout painfully slow, The Herald report says Australia passed the three-million mark for administered vaccine doses on Friday, Mr Perrottet pointing to the example of Qantas, which had to cancel all international flights except to New Zealand from October 31 to December 20 in the wake of the federal budget, adding, “We saw last week how Qantas has had to scramble to change its plans,” and “It’s a big example but there are many businesses of all sizes who need a clearer timeline, and I will continue to advocate strongly for that.”
In the meantime, leaked recordings of Victorian Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton at a private seminar of healthcare workers in April have revealed that he also believes the country would need to abandon its “fortress Australia” approach to COVID-19 and “make a call on letting it run” once vaccinations were widely offered.
Experts across a range of disciplines also echoed and supported Dr Coatsworth’s initial “false idol” comments, insisting it was time to move the conversation toward reopening Australia’s borders.
Professor Catherine Bennett, Deakin University’s chair of epidemiology, warned Australia will have a “hard time catching up” if the rest of the world had already learned to live with the virus, saying, “People are saying, ‘we’ll just wait, adding, “But we went into lockdown to wait for the vaccine” and “And now we’ll just wait for the next vaccine”, “What are we waiting for?”
Richard Holden, an economist at the University of NSW, said it was time the government made its reopening plan clear, saying, “These debates about, ‘we cannot be a hermit nation’…. or we cannot take any risks”, and “They are kind of vacuous fortune cookie wisdom level statements,” adding, “The whole question is: what is the plan? What do we need to do?”
The Herald report goes on to say that as NSW prepares to deliver its budget next month, Mr Perrottet warned it would be impacted by the federal government’s assumption on border closures, which cost the state $1.5 billion a month, adding, “In the November budget we expected borders would begin to re-open gradually towards the end of 2021, so there will likely be some impact from a longer timeframe,” and that it was time to look at winding back the last of NSW’s restrictions, which include the one person per 2 square metre rule in pubs and clubs.
Acting Victorian Premier James Merlino agreed with Professor Sutton and said Australia could begin winding back restrictions once a greater proportion of the population had been vaccinated, adding, “Once we can get to a point where the vaccine has been successfully rolled out to a large extent then we can start making further changes”.
So now that Dr Coatsworth has changed his tune, I wonder if all those that came out and supported him will stick with their views or will they also change their tunes and will they have been “got at”?
In the meantime, what an awful mess we find ourselves in created by our highly ineffective, inept, uninformed and politically driven leaders.
An edited report including from The Sydney Morning Herald and Channel 9 by John Alwyn-Jones, Special Correspondent, Travel and Tourism
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