CPMaverick

It was primarily enacted to prevent animals & plants from being brought to Australia. It was brought to legislation via the Department of Agriculture.


They included human health but that wasn't the main focus of the legislation. Before this, it was most famously used against a certain celebrities dogs...

Not going to argue further semantics, you can decide and/or read the act for yourself. But a fact is, it is not simply about human disease, it's a broad-based act covering many other subjects as well. So in my mind, I'm not so certain they had every scenario covered as intended. And you can't just cite the legislation as proof of intent... that's an opinion and you can have a different one of course.

LHR/MEL/Europe FF

The second reading speech is equally clear, foreshadowing that the human health provisions will be rarely used, but are essential to manage serious communicable diseases when they occur.

Not much room to say this was not intentional.

wanderlustFL

Admittedly an interloper here as I am American. But I had a trip planned to Perth, Adelaide, Great Ocean Road and Melbourne for November 2020. And, I have been watching the AU situation carefully as I hoped the trip was merely deferred. Sadly, it is now cancelled because it is unclear when I will be able to go. 2022 is way too uncertain and 2023 is beyond my planning horizon, especially for a trip that entails 20 plus hours of transit from my home in the eastern US. I just read an interesting article in the New York Times labeling AU "The Hermit Nation" and it implies that Morrison's latest statements regarding keeping border closures largely in place are at least, in part, politically driven given impending elections. Further to that I listened to a Pod Cast sponsored by the English Newspaper The Telegraph also sharply critical of current isolationist policies being extended for such a long time into next year. The upshot of both pieces is that the collateral impacts of maintaining these policies in what was formerlly a very globalist centric country has the potential to do real harm as Covid (hopefully) begins to recede to more manageable levels this year and early next. What do you all think?

lokijuh

Unfortunately that's what you get when public opinion is firmly in favour of border closures, and there are no leaders (except the NSW Premier) with the guts to dare suggest anything other than complete, and even tighter border closures. The lack of vision coming from the federal government, is to be expected given the upcoming election. Last election showed that taking bold policies to the electorate is a recipe for electoral failure.

Whilst I don't think it's wise to suddenly open up and let the whole world in, there should be a plan to manage risks, with gradual steps. At the moment the discussion yo-yoes between completely closed and completely open. Such is the state of affairs in the government, media and in the public the nuances of an incremental pathway to opening up are too dull for the news cycle. Not dramatic enough!

Also, whilst I think there is little chance of public support for foreign tourists visiting, or for Australians to leave for holidays, I think the public is starting to get a little sick of sportspeople and celebrities having a free pass to come and go as they please, whilst many are separated from their loved ones. There's been a gradual increase in discussion of the separation from loved ones, if that momentum can continue hopefully a starting point for allowing greater contact between Australians and their overseas relatives and loved ones. This strikes a chord, in the way that "holidays' do not.

IMOA

There’s been a few discussions about this but I’d put in a few comments/opinions.

For all the image of the larrikin, anti establishment Aussie the reality is that Australians on the whole are very quick to expect the government to fix ‘the problem’. There’s a thick seam of nanny state through Aus and so the border closures to the outside world played well to that constituency.

Australia will sacrifice the young for the old, unless they’re in aged care and at that point they’re out of sight so don’t matter. You can see this through a lot of the tax system but basically younger Australians do get somewhat screwed over so in this pandemic there was a bias towards making the young suffer for the benefit of the older.

Up to now those two factors have been the most important, basically protect ourselves at all cost. However I’m snow seeing a definite change in sentiment, people who were very much in the shut the borders camp are also joining the get vaccinated to open the economy camp.

A few factors will help this, states run by the labor (left) party were the biggest proponents of lockdowns and border closures however the vaccine rollout is more the responsibility of the federal liberal (right) party so straight partisan politics is moving people in the ‘shut things down’ camp into the ‘vaccinate and open’ camp. Likewise the two biggest industries impacted by border closures are education, particularly tertiary, and travel. People working in tertiary education tend to skew left and those in lower paying tourism/service jobs also tend to be more left than right. So again, the side of politics that was most inclined to be in the shut things down camp are also the ones who are most likely to be losing their jobs and they’re starting to question whether this is necessary. And, frankly, old people want to go on a cruise again.

I don’t think there is any chance of meaningful change in policies prior to vaccination of Australians but I am seeing a lot of, hmm, call them ‘outspoken friends of Dan’, who are now on the ‘vaccinate to open the economy’ bandwagon. I’d also say that Morrison never has an opinion which a focus group hasn’t first given him so anything that he says is likely a month or two behind public sentiment and IMO this is certainly true in his recent comments.

exp

Some suggestions for restarting travel to/from Australia from experts:

https://www.theguardian.com/australi...-than-mid-2022

bensyd

Yes, I see that too. It didn't really take much to see the change. A fair amount of the strong border talk from the federal government is because they've ballsed up the vaccine rollout and they know there's an election coming sooner than later. If we had a vaccine rollout in full speed like the UK or the US the messaging from the government would be very different. The reality is that if NSW and/or Victoria support open borders then the rest of the country will have to follow. Gladys said this week NSW needs to hit 5 million vaccinated in order to reopen NSW to the world.

I have heard stories like this from multiple older people who are eligible to be vaccinated but can't find a GP. The federal government runs the GP rollout. On the other hand the NSW government's vaccination hub is already offering appointments to healthy adults over 40 for the Pfizer vaccine.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/we-h...21-p57u37.html

exp

I knew that an Australian University was working on a vaccine last year but haven't heard much from it. Turned out the govt. had signed a deal for 51 million doses, enough to cover the entire Australian population. But while they had some promising clinical data, they ran into complications.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...e-tracker.html

The researchers are now trying to re-engineer the vaccine so that it won't trigger the HIV false positives.

bensyd

This opinion piece is worth reading. Domestic politics and a looming election is playing into how the federal government messages on the pandemic. tl;dr it suits the federal government to keep a "fortress Australia" narrative until after the election. If they communicated a sense of urgency about reopening the border then they'd get blowback on the poorly planned vaccine rollout.https://www.smh.com.au/politics/fede...21-p57tzx.html

percysmith

Of course if India/Taiwan-like outbreak happens between now and Election Day, he’s screwed. How can we start an outbreak?

bensyd

He's hardly a shoe in as it is. I don't think the LNP has been ahead 2PP since January.

exp

I hope people haven't forgotten those fires.

exp

Some recent surveys show vaccine hesitancy, including as much as 1/3 of Australians.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-57181038

nancypants

concur. Remote aboriginal communities will be absolutely decimated by COVID (health was modelling a 20-25% mortality rate but apparently police and government had been told 50%), however I am seriously battling to get anyone to consider it. Wurrumiyanga (Bathurst island) managed to get about a 50% administration rate just recently, Numbulwar (my old joint) we don’t have official stats but I’m told low, maybe 10%, where I am at the moment I’d be surprised if they even get that

[edit to add- these are communities that have previously had exceptionally low- close to zero- vaccine hesistancy]

agree that it shouldn’t be compulsory but they really need to come up with something- a tax break or extra Centrelink payment, chook raffle, whatever- to carrot-ise people

docbert

The US (and most other countries) had relatively high hesitancy at the start too, but over time it dropped. As people start to see others getting vaccinated and not keeling over in the street the hesitancy will reduce. Obviously in Australia the press around AZ hasn't helped, but if the end result of that is just to push more people to getting Pfizer then that hopefully won't have too much long-term impact.

The bigger issue in Australia is potentially complacency - the people who would otherwise get vaccinated, but just don't see the need given the lack of local transmission. As counter-intuitive as it might otherwise be, a moderate size breakout might actually help with the longer-term vaccination efforts...

Here in the US we apparently passed 50% of the adult population fully vaccinated today. And that's with the definition of "fully vaccinated" which means you're 2 weeks past the last shot, so in terms of actual doses we're even further along than that!

I guess the question there is what does "worried" mean? Worried I might feel lethargic and need to take a sickie is a valid concern. As is worried I might have trouble sleeping and be tired tomorrow. Worried I might drop dead as a result, not so much. I guess I was "worried" about possible side effects like the first two, but that didn't stop me getting vaccinated on the first day I was eligible to!