The state of ‘just live with it’ in NSW looks set to be estranged from the rest of the country for some time.
As NSW Covid-19 infection numbers soar past 800 per day, all other states and territories are effectively pursuing an elimination strategy. We are confronting the prospect of two Australias throughout the pandemic.
Encouraged by the Morrison government, the NSW government’s philosophy is “living with the virus.”
Mr Morrison awarded the NSW government the “gold standard” last year. On 16 July 2020, he drew a distinction between the NSW lockdown-lite approach and the heavy lockdowns of the Victorian government: “That demonstrates … in New South Wales how effectively the states can respond to this, and the best protection against the virus, to live with the virus … and to open up your economy.”
The Prime Minister added that you don't protect your economy by continually shutting it down, pointedly criticising the Andrews government: “That's what you have to do when things get to the point they have in Victoria.”
Admittedly, that was before the Delta strain began wreaking its havoc. But the NSW government made a conscious decision not to lock down the eastern suburbs when an unvaccinated, maskless limousine driver transporting an international cabin crew imported Delta into Bondi.
At the time, Morrison supported the decision: “My fellow Sydneysiders can feel very confident that if anyone can get on top of this without shutting the city down it is the NSW government."
At that time, the eastern suburbs cluster totalled just 36 infected people with only 11 new cases.
By standing back for 10 days and allowing the Bondi infections to leak into Sydney’s heavily populated southwestern suburbs, the NSW and federal governments lost control of the virus.
On Thursday last week, Premier Berejiklian reiterated: "Everyone will have to learn to live with Delta and in New South Wales, we are learning that earlier than others."
Yet the next day, the Premier announced heavy new restrictions as the virus spread through Sydney and further into NSW.
Hospitals in NSW and in the rest of Australia do not normally operate well below their capacity. The health authorities will be trying to prevent surging Delta cases overwhelming already-stretched state hospitals, causing the cancellation of elective surgery and possibly diverting staff from emergency departments. For those patients living with pain or other debilitating conditions, surgery may be elective in the eyes of the health system but essential to them.
Already there are more than 550 NSW covid patients in hospital, almost 100 in intensive care and 127 have died in the current outbreak.
The attitude of other state and territory leaders to the libertarian philosophy of living with the virus was typified by ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr: "We either stop this virus now or we live like Sydney for the rest of this year."
No other state or territory leader is remotely contemplating opening their borders to residents of NSW.
Vaccination is the key to opening up. After being told repeatedly the vaccine rollout is not a race, it is now a race – but we badly missed the start. Supplies, slow in arriving from a lackadaisical federal government, remain inadequate.
Even when Australia reaches the vaccine targets of 70-80 per cent, most children will remain unvaccinated, meaning the proportion of the population vaccinated will actually be 56-64 per cent .
Despite medical assurances that COVID-19 is like a mild flu for young children, most Australian parents will simply not leave their children to the mercy of the virus. As a parent, would you feel confident there are no long-term health consequences for your children or grandchildren from contracting COVID-19?
All the economic evidence is that when the virus appears, going early and going hard is best for the economy. Econometric analysis https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10389-021-01611-0 finds that achieving zero community transmission lowers both public health and economic costs compared with allowing community transmission to continue, and early relaxation of social distancing increases both public health and economic costs.
Unfortunately, there is little chance of NSW getting to zero community transmission in any time soon, even with the belatedly accelerated vaccine rollout.
Both the federal and NSW governments are reactive to COVID-19 and, despite the lessons from overseas, they were taken by surprise by the Delta variant.
There are 20 more letters in the Greek alphabet.
The Prime Minister turns up on a day-to-day basis but he looks more like an observer. Chauncey Gardiner rose to great heights by just being there, but he’s not what Australia needs right now.
If the Morrison and Berejiklian governments revert to their libertarian philosophy of opening up quickly and living with the virus, every other state and territory – Liberal and Labor – will refuse to accept the consequences being imposed on them.
For the foreseeable future, five states and two territories will maintain hard borders against NSW. We will be living not in one Australia but two.
Craig Emerson is a distinguished fellow at the ANU, director of the APEC Study Centre at RMIT and adjunct professor at Victoria University’s College of Business.