Sydney, Australia
Reuters
Kathy Chalker, a Sydney art studio owner, is just the sort of voter Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison needs to win the country’s next election – a long-time conservative party supporter with a small business in a swing seat.
But Chalker has already decided to vote Morrison out.
With her business closed indefinitely under a COVID-19 lockdown in Australia’s biggest city, Chalker blames Morrison’s government for what she sees as the blundering management of a vaccine rollout that is behind almost every other developed nation.
“Why weren’t they prepared? We were all watching this happening around the world – it’s pure incompetence,” Chalker told Reuters from her home in Sydney’s western suburbs, the epicentre of a COVID-19 outbreak that is the country’s worst since the pandemic began.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison leaves Downing Street in London, Britain, on 15th June. PICTURE: Reuters/Henry Nicholls.
Chalker is not alone in her sentiments. On current polling, Morrison’s Liberal Party-led Coalition would likely lose its thin majority in the country’s 151-seat parliament at an election that must be held by the middle of next year.
Australia’s exposure to the coronavirus pandemic remains small compared to many other developed nations, with a total of just over 41,400 cases and 971 deaths, and for several months it appeared to be emerging from the crisis. But the fast-moving Delta variant has exposed a major weakness; the country’s slow-moving vaccine program.
SYDNEY EXTENDS COVID-19 LOCKDOWN, IMPOSES CURFEW ON WORST-HIT AREAS
The COVID-19 lockdown of Sydney was extended on Friday and a nightly curfew imposed on the city’s worst-affected suburbs in a last-ditch attempt to slow the spread of the highly infectious Delta variant that is spreading across New South Wales state.
Australia’s third wave of COVID-19 infections centred on Sydney has forced more than half the country’s near 26 million people into lockdown and pushed the world’s 13th-largest economy to the brink of its second recession in as many years.
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said new restrictions, including a requirement to wear a mask when outside and limits on exercise, were needed as the state reported its third consecutive day of more than 600 new COVID-19 cases.
“I asked health and police to work together, to give me a final list of what we can throw at this, to leave no shadow of a doubt as to how serious we are about getting the rate of growth down, the case numbers down,” Berejiklian told a media conference.
In the 12 council areas at the epicentre of Sydney’s outbreak, a curfew would be in place from 9pm to 5am from Monday, she said.
Anyone caught entering those areas would be fined and required to self-isolate for 14 days, New South Wales state Police Commissioner Mick Fuller said.
Berejiklian reported 644 new infections on Friday, most of them in Sydney, down from a record 681 a day earlier.
Daily cases have topped 400 for the past seven days despite eight weeks of lockdown in Australia’s biggest city.
Four new deaths were confirmed, taking the total number of deaths in the latest outbreak to 65 since 16th June.
Since the start of its third outbreak, Australia has recorded just shy of 12,000 infections. High vaccination levels among Australia most vulnerable means the mortality rate is 0.54 per cent, official data shows, below previous outbreaks.
With only about 28 per cent of people above 16 years of age fully vaccinated, Australia has been unable to contain the Sydney outbreak which has now seeded outbreaks in other towns and cities across Australia as well as New Zealand.
Neighbouring Victoria state on Friday recorded 55 locally acquired COVID-19 cases and warned it was at risk of being swamped by infections.
“We are right on the edge of this getting away from us and it’s not because contact tracing aren’t doing everything they can. They are. It’s not because we didn’t lock down fast enough. We did,” Victoria state Premier Daniel Andrews told reporters in Melbourne.
Australia’s capital Canberra recorded 16 COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours, with about five per cent of the population forced into quarantine to contain the spread of infections.
Despite a third wave of infections from the Delta variant, Australia’s COVID-19 numbers are relatively low, with some 42,100 cases and 975 deaths.
– RENJU JOSE and COLIN PACKHAM, Reuters
“The problem is Morrison set expectations so high,” said John Hewson, a former Liberal Party leader. “Australia was riding high with few if any cases, and now he has to manage these lows.”
The country recorded 754 cases on Thursday, the highest single-day increase, since the previous peak a year ago. The bulk of those were in Sydney’s west, which includes the federal electorate of Lindsay, where Chalker lives and works.
Sydney’s west is home to around 2.5 million people and represents the country’s third largest economy after Sydney’s central business district and the city of Melbourne.
Anger is growing in the region that a two-month lockdown does not appear to have curbed the Delta outbreak, but has severely impacted local businesses.
Chalker voted for the Liberal Party at the 2019 election but believes they have overlooked small businesses during the current lockdown.
“My whole family feel the same way. I have adult sons and they are saying, ‘Yep, we’ll vote for what you need mum’.”
With more than half Australia’s population of 25 million living under some form of lockdown, economists say the national economy is now at risk of falling into its second recession in as many years.
Residents in Lindsay and surrounding electorates are subject to the most stringent measures in the country, with most confined to their homes except for exercise and buying essential supplies.
“The people here are the engine of Australia; they need to be working, many live hand-to-mouth,” said Jody Reeves, another Lindsay resident, who describes herself as a swing voter.
“Morrison is going to need a strong advertising campaign to make us forget, but I’ll be here to remind everyone what went wrong.”
Vaccine fallout
While Australia’s policy responses to the pandemic are a mix of state and federal responsibility, Morrison’s government has taken much of the blame as the organiser of the national vaccine program.
Just 30 per cent of people aged 16 and over have been fully vaccinated after a big push in recent weeks to improve take-up.
The delays were partly due to changed health advice over the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which was to be the backbone of the country’s immunisation program, due to rare cases of blood clots among some recipients. Australia has since scrambled to boost its supplies of Pfizer Inc’s vaccine and reversed some advice on AstraZeneca.
Representatives for Morrison and the office of Liberal MP Melissa McIntosh, who represents Lindsay, did not respond to questions.
Morrison has said that government measures have kept people in jobs and businesses afloat and have helped Australia avoid the fatalities suffered elsewhere.
Under Australian rules, the government must call and hold an election by May next year. It is widely assumed it will be done so as late as possible to allow the vaccination program to advance, and travel reinstated, lifting the public mood.
In doing so, Morrison will hope to retain the support that propelled him to a poll-defying victory in 2019.
Morrison carved out a narrow path to victory at that election via marginal seats in Queensland and Western Australia – where mining and farming are dominant industries – along with snatching Lindsay from the opposition Labor Party.
Labor enjoys strong support in Victoria, Australia’s second most populous state, and could return to power for the first time since 2013 should it win some of those marginal contests, with Lindsay firmly in sight.
