Australia’s Covid Response

With half of all Australia in lockdown, there is perhaps no more pressing time to consider some of the key dynamics affecting Australia’s Covid-response. In the nation’s worst affected states, New South Wales (NSW), South Australia, Queensland and Victoria, a hard-and-fast style lockdown typifies Australia’s ‘circuit breaker’ response to the pandemic. Cases in Sydney have topped 460 per day. Hard borders, lockdowns and restrictions take center stage as the nation deals with its worst Covid-19 outbreak yet. But with nationwide vaccination rates at an alarmingly low 21% and infection rates spiking to new highs, critics point to how these lockdowns could have been avoided all together (Health, 2021). Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, has been criticised for what can be seen as a lethargic and misguided response to securing the 60 million much needed vaccinations for a nation of 25 million.  This sentiment is evidenced as Mr. Morrison’s approval ratings continue to sag. The distractions offered by board games and the Olympics are only taking us so far it seems.

The Region and Australia’s Role

Internal dynamics aside, the current outbreak presents a watershed moment in global politics, as fellow OECD nations, such as the UK, approach the critical levels for herd immunity, 80% vaccination. With this number, restrictions have been eased, and quarantine free travel permitted, for those vaccinated, to countries like Portugal, Spain and Greece. However, whilst these tourist-dependent economies enjoy an influx of cashed-up Brits, Australia’s own region has been hit harder than ever. The South Pacific hosts many small island states with geographically dispersed and culturo-linguistically diverse communities (Medcalf, 2020). The World Bank recently highlighted that Vanuatu and Kiribati are in the top five countries worst affected by the global Covid-19 pandemic, heightening concerns that their small tourist-dependent economies will struggle to weather the storm (World Bank, 2020).

Aid and Labour

In this context it is perhaps not surprising that the Pacific Islands and Timor Leste have reached out to Australia for assistance. On a domestic front, there is of course concern that Australia could perform more proactively in ensuring the safety of its own citizens before attending to those of the wider region. This argument has been largely dismissed, however, as Australia announced the establishment of a one-off $304.7 million COVID-19 Response Package in June 2020 (DFAT, 2020). Delivered through the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), the package has thus far provided vital resources such as PPE, medical personnel and over 116,000 GenXtesting testing cartridges (ibid). The program reinforces other socio-economic support initiatives such as the continuation of the Pacific Labour Scheme (PLS). This program is a trade agreement between Australia and the Pacific Islands Nations, whereby successful applicants may work in specific agricultural jobs in Australia. Critically, it provides labour to rural and regional Australia, filling achingly vacant positions in Australia’s ‘critical’ agricultural sector (ibid).

The program has seen workers from countries such as Samoa and Vanuatu commence work in the citrus picking season in Victoria and Tasmania and is an example of Australia’s efforts to build economic resilience, stability and opportunities for shared prosperity between Australia and its neighbours (ibid). The program represents the consolidation of these ideals and forms a large part of Australia’s reinvigorated engagement in the region under Mr Morrison’s 2019 ‘Pacific Step-up’ (ibid). Despite its critiques as ‘superficial’ and ‘imperial’, the PLS does support the South Pacific’s domestic economies to an extent, but more importantly buttresses the region’s economic strength in general – a core concern for Australia in the current climate. Economic diversification towards semi-skilled labour seems to add another feather to the region’s bow, given many islands’ reliance on commodity markets, which in Vanuatu and Fiji comprise a majority of GDP (DFAT, 2020).

By these standards, the South Pacific has struggled to relinquish the colonial chains which brought it into contact with global and regional markets. Indeed, there are other factors at play here too. Whilst Covid cases in the South Pacific are relatively low, shocks such as natural disasters further impede regional stability. The compounding effect of geographic isolation during the pandemic, and frequent destruction of property by tropical cyclones, imbue Australia’s self-assigned role as ‘security-guarantor’ with even greater significance. Largely, this is consolidated in Australia’s identity as the largest aid donor to the South Pacific, contributing significantly to disaster relief even this year in Fiji (DFAT, 2021). Moreover, Australian electoral officials supported Fiji and Timor Leste in their elections. A democratic election is an important metric for DFAT’s commitment to ‘good governance’ in the region.

Concerns on Home Soil

This latest chapter of regional focus with disaster relief packages, pandemic-support and labour mobility schemes, comes as Australia’s own food supply chains and economy are in jeopardy.  Following Beijing’s famously icy list of ‘14 complaints’ to Australia, tariffs have cut off key industries such as wine, beef and barley, reducing Australia’s exports to China to the tune of 90% in the case of wine. Unsurprisingly, Australia’s relationships with the Pacific Island Nations and Timor Leste have since amplified in significance not as trade partners for these exports, but as a solution to the many vacancies in Australia’s fruit picking season.

Australians are thankful for the security that the PLS has provided the agricultural industry and placed faith in Australian politics, on one level or another, at a time when the ‘greater game’ increasingly harms rural and regional Australia. Now that Australia’s famous thirty years of uninterrupted growth has halted, Australia’s South Pacific engagement seems necessary even as a consolidation of regional power in the face of shifting geopolitical plates. The recurrent lockdowns and low vaccination rates seem to have stymied faith in Morrison’s governance on the domestic level. Australia, seen only earlier this year as a Pandemic-utopia, now struggles to play catch up with the rest of the Covid-wise OECD world. Clearly reputation, vaccinations and regional strength are important for Australia. In what priority and how wisely these objectives are addressed are the questions now at stake. Whilst the pandemic is far from over, Australia’s current ability to respond with dexterity and responsibility will indelibly mark how the period is remembered.

Bibliography

Department of Health. (2021) Australia’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout. The Australian Government, Canberra

Department of Home Affairs. (​​2021). Covid-19 and the border – Seasonal Worker. Australian Government

DFAT. (2020). Australia stepping-up to address COVID-19 in the Pacific. The Australian Government, Canberra

DFAT. (2020). Humanitarian preparedness and response. The Australian Government, Canberra.

DFAT. (2020) Statistics on Vanuatu. The Australian Government, Canberra

Metcalf, Rory. (2020). Contest for the Indo–Pacific: why China won’t map the future. Carlton, VIC, La Trobe University Press

The World Bank. (2020). ​​US$10m Emergency World Bank Funding for Vanuatu