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Long before he made it to Prime Minister, Scott Morrison became adept at hiding behind convenient phrases to avoid taking responsibility for matters of significant public interest, and he is still getting away with it.
By Jackie Pearson
In 2013, as Immigration Minister, Scott Morrison used the phrase “on water matters” to avoid answering questions about the newly-elected Abbott Government’s boats turnback policy. Eight years later he is using the same strategy – only his title and the phrase have changed.
Now Prime Minister Morrison, and his cabinet, are using the phrase “a matter for the States and Territories” to avoid responsibility for anything to do with COVID quarantine and its known and potential shortcomings.
Shortly after COVID reached our shores, almost a year ago, the Labor Opposition decided it could not attack the Morrison Government on anything related to the pandemic. To do so would have been using disease, death and the ‘rona recession, for political purposes. COVID cooperation was the name of the game.
Morrison did not buy in, of course. Federal Labor Leader, Anthony Albanese, was not made part of the national cabinet. State and Territory leaders became the Morrison Government’s first line of defence against any COVID-related controversies.
Parliamentary sitting days were pared back to the absolute minimum, in the name of public health. Morrison avoided as many unrehearsed Question Times, where he is at his most vulnerable, as possible.
The PM’s approval rating has stayed above 60 per cent since May 2020. Albanese’s has stayed stuck in the low 40s.
Even his evidently poor decision to back the UQ-CSL vaccine, which produced false positives for HIV and had to be scrapped, doesn’t seem to have dented his popularity. He has not been held to account for leaving casual employees out of key COVID financial support measures.
Morrison can call an election as early as August and, unless something catastrophic happens, an early poll would likely cement a fourth term for the current Liberal-National Government.
As the US, UK and Europe continue to be COVID basket cases, the low rates of infection and death in Australia are remarkable and a tribute to our state and territory leaders, even considering some pretty major glitches.
Effective quarantine for those returning from overseas is Australia’s greatest safeguard against the pandemic and it is not good enough for the nation’s government to hide behind “that’s a matter for the states”.
The latest example of Tennis Australia’s chartered Qantas COVID-carrier demonstrates, yet again, why we need a national, high-security approach to quarantine or we need to stop international arrivals altogether for a time.
NSW Health Minister, Brad Hazzard, said over 3000 employees are involved in supporting his state’s COVID quarantine measures. Queensland Premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, is negotiating with her state’s mining industry to consider using remote mining camps as quarantine stations.
Not good enough
A mining camp outside Gladstone is hardly the ideal location for housing thousands of returning travellers and ex-pats. It keeps them away from transit channels but where will the workforce come from to secure and care for them? The mining industry will happily take the revenue and, like their mates in Federal Cabinet, take no responsibility for the privilege.
The best solution for a seamless quarantine system is a national approach. The best locations are military bases and the best workforce the national army, navy and air force.
If the world makes it through to Biden’s inauguration without Trump using the nuclear codes, our military personnel, including doctors and nurses, should be available and consummately up to the task.
Australia, thus far, has escaped the death and infection rates being experienced around the globe yet Morrison’s keen interest in securing our borders appears to have subsided as he sits comfortably behind the premiers, playing favourites along party lines, and taking absolutely no responsibility for the wellbeing of the nation.
Throwing money at vaccine production lines is all very well but the history of successful vaccination against SARS, and COVID-19 is a SARS virus, is poor. Everyone knows that. Quarantine is our greatest vulnerability and could be our greatest strength. Morrison, his Health Minister, the whole Cabinet, should be held to account for not taking steps to put a national quarantine system in place.
