As I wrote yesterday, Australian PM Scott Morrison is finally finding some domestic backbone and is pushing back against the recalcitrant Covid dictators in the state capitals.
Morrison has laid out a “roadmap” to re-opening Australia, ending the rolling lockdowns, and learning to live with what is now just another seasonal bug. State premiers, who’ve enjoyed unprecedented power thanks to the panic over the China virus, are resisting, but Morrison is adamant. This is the realistic option that Australia has to face, sooner or later. Politically, Morrison also apparently senses that voters are fed up with lockdowns and Covid police states, especially after the shocking scenes in Melbourne last weekend.
It also seems that Morrison is enjoying the chance to whack another loudmouthed recalcitrant, this time across the Tasman.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has hit back at opposition from the country’s state premiers and criticised New Zealand’s response over the roadmap back to pre-pandemic life, saying the days of pursuing an elimination strategy for Covid-19 are over.
Morrison has had to put up with plenty of bad-mouthing from “kind” Jacinda, over the years. Whether it’s playing China’s ‘Useful Idiot’ over emissions or sniping about repatriating NZ-born crims, Ardern has never been backward about shooting her mouth off at Morrison.
Now, Morrison is returning serve. While Ardern has staked her political fortunes on posing as New Zealand’s “Covid Queen”, Morrison is singling her out as an example of just what not to do.
“Any state and territory that thinks that somehow they can protect themselves from Covid with the Delta strain forever, that’s just absurd,” Morrison told the 9News breakfast show Today.
Morrison said one only needed to look at what was happening in New Zealand, with an extended lockdown announced on Monday, to prove striving for Covid-zero was not a realistic option with the Delta strain.
“New Zealand can’t do that. They were following an elimination strategy. They’re in lockdown. The way through is to get to those 70 per cent and 80 per cent marks [for vaccination] and open safely,” he said.
Taking up Ardern and Co’s penchant for simplistic metaphors, Morrison is likening her government to a pack of scaredy-cat cavemen.
Morrison said it could be compared to the popular animated movie The Croods.
“Some wanted to stay in the cave, and the young girl wanted to deal with the challenges of living in a different world,” Morrison said.
“Covid is a different world. We need to get out of there and live with it.
“We can’t stay in the cave.”
Instead of New Zealand — last, loneliest, most scared, locked-down, apart — Morrison is clearly looking to Britain, which has learned to live with the big, bad, spooky virus.
Morrison pointed to updated modelling released by the Doherty Institute on Monday night that showed it was still possible to open up the country with tens or hundreds of daily Covid-19 cases.
“Cases”, remember, almost without exception really meaning “people who’ve tested positive to the virus”. Despite the scaremongering over Delta, the reality is that it is highly infectious, but scarcely a fraction as deadly as the initial variants of the virus.
“What the plan does is when you get to 80 per cent [of people vaccinated], you manage it like any other infectious disease,” Morrison said.
“Now, we don’t shut the country down because of the flu. We don’t do that.
“We don’t do it for other infectious diseases.
“So what’s really important is that that’s what this modelling shows us, that you can manage this with some baseline elements as well as commonsense to ensure you can treat it like the flu.
“That’s what living with Covid looks like.”
Stuff
Or you can keep locking down over single cases.
Your move, Jacinda.
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