More Promises from Prime Minister Morrison

Written By: - Date published: 1:03 pm, October 11th, 2021 - 14 comments
Categories: australian politics, covid-19, Economy, health, International, tourism - Tags:

So, the Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison is preparing for a November resumption of international air travel.

In a Facebook livestream yesterday. The prime minister said that he’s had discussions with New South Wales Premier Dominic Perrottet about bringing forward the start date of international travel for vaccinated people.

All he needs is for the home quarantine programme to be ready. There could not be a better live experiment for us to watch for a couple of months and see how it works out, because you know what the John Key crowd are going to do next: complain about why it’s happening over there first and in general why has New Zealand lost a comparative advantage for tourism. I strongly suspect that our South Island communities will not be so quick to take up the same approach: they like their current COVID-free status.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before in an Australia that existed before the catastrophic NSW and Victoria outbreaks this year but Morrison said yesterday:

We can’t live as a hermit kingdom on the other side of the world. If people are double vaccinated it makes complete sense for them to return to Australia in better settings than being cramped up in a hotel for two weeks.”

We will likely go through a series of debates here about all the differences that may exist in Australia’s approach to re-opening to the world, and all the systems that may contribute to enabling that, and in general what about them over there. This is what we need to do: stop the comparisons. New Zealand his its own health capacity, own people, own borders, own programme. We are where we are with this thing.

Every country is going to come out of this in a slightly different trajectory, and we are going to have to stop the perpetual comparisons. In COVID, each sovereign state is on its own.

14 comments on “More Promises from Prime Minister Morrison ”

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  1. McFlock 1
    11 October 2021 at 1:21 pm

    Ah, so he's waiting to build NSW cases up to a comparable level with the destination nations before opening up to them?

  2. Graeme 2
    11 October 2021 at 3:43 pm

    But wasn't Scomo's "open borders" just for vaccinated Australian citizens? So Aussies who couldn't get MIQ could come home and self isolate, and allow Aussies go overseas and be able to get back. They had a prohibition on travel out of Australia.

    Will be interesting how the home isolation works out.

    https://covid19.homeaffairs.gov.au/travel-vaccinated-australians

    Won't do a thing for for inbound tourism.

    • Tricledrown 2.1
      11 October 2021 at 4:23 pm

      To many risks until we know no new variants .Don't Panic . Tourism is not as important as a over burdoned health system.

      • Graeme 2.1.1
        11 October 2021 at 8:53 pm

        My comment about tourism was referencing how it's just assumed that's the reason for 'opening the borders'. Same as the Trans Tasman bubble, the only beneficiary of that was the visiting friends and family sector, tourism got absolutely nothing. All it did was scare the NZ market away.

        But it shows how Scomo is going after the expat vote by letting them come home without MIQ (well home isolation, yeah, right). Very much doubt many Aussies will be rushing off for overseas holidays.

    • McFlock 2.2
      11 October 2021 at 4:28 pm

      It's funny, one refrain from antivaxxers is that the vaccines aren't perfect, but when people want to ditch public health standards apparently just making sure incoming passengers have a vaccine certificate everything will be fine.

      Just like pre-departure testing was supposed to be the thing that would help us out with the fishing fleet.

      And home isolation is a joke.

  3. Patricia Bremner 3
    11 October 2021 at 5:04 pm

    Advantage. Jacinda Ardern going to remote areas to get vaccine numbers up

    A nasty journalist in the 4pm stand up implying she was "on an enjoyable jaunt and could others do that?"

    Wow, She is the Prime Minister showing she cares about keeping people safe.

    The journalist should check the list of opposition MPs who have travelled for surprising reasons… not many to support full vaccination. He is "pillock of the week" in my book.

  4. DS 4
    11 October 2021 at 5:24 pm

    Australia's bungling basically means that we cannot have Quarantine-free travel with them (except poor old WA) for the foreseeable future. This time next year, they'll be as bad as Britain.

    • Graeme 4.1
      11 October 2021 at 8:41 pm

      I'd love to see New Zealand do a quarantine free bubble with the State Government in Perth. Would be quite easy, Air New Zealand and Qantas have done direct flights for 40 years, and others from time to time.

      Of all the states they are the closest to New Zealand, with an equal distaste for eastern Australia. I lived there for a while in late 80's and secessionist sentiment was alive and well, they were of a similar mind to NZ regarding Federation in 1900, the eastern states underwrote the railway across the Nullabor which brought them in.

      Also nothing poor about the place, money flows are quite strongly eastward, the place could function just as well, if not better on it's own.