NSW heads for light, Vic stays in the dark

COME Monday the difference between Dominic Perrottet’s NSW and Dan Andrews’ Victoria will be thrown into stark and very, very visible relief across TV evening news.

Sydney’s Pitt St Mall will look like a reprise of VJ Day back in August 1945. Maybe there’ll even be a Dancing Man Version 2.0.

Melbourne’s Bourke St Mall will look in contrast like the opening scene in the sequel to Nevil Shute’s On the Beach.

Spoiler alert – and, just quietly, why there never was a sequel – both the novel and that “first” movie ended with every single person on the planet dead.

That’s to say, the Bourke St Mall on Monday will look exactly like it looks this Friday and on just about every other day it has looked in Melbourne’s world record 249 days, and counting, in lockdown: bereft of human beings.

It’s not simply that NSW is “opening up” at 70 per cent full vaccination, at least two weeks ahead of Victoria.

But, spoiler alert again, let’s see what happens to the case numbers in Victoria over the next two weeks.

The “at least” two weeks could grow to three or four.

Let’s also see what happens to the case numbers in NSW as well.

The hopefully good news is that even the pig-headed crew south of the Murray might be prepared to learn something from what happens in (really) opened up NSW.

Right now, ahead of any evidence and ahead of such learning, the two “openings up” are going to be like night and day.

In broad terms, come Monday, Sydneysiders can go to restaurants, shops and have people in their homes.

And can stop wearing masks if they are driving tractors in the bush – and indeed everywhere else outside.

In Melbourne – on or about October 26, when Victoria hits the 70 per cent vac-vac – Victorians will be able to “do” virtually none of that, apart from some minor outdoor access.

In essence, that’s to say, they would then be able to travel up to 25km instead of 15km, to then exercise their “right” to not actually do anything, apart from walking.

And to repeat, even those “freedoms” are subject to what happens to the case numbers; and in turn, to what Andrews’ reaction is to the numbers.

Talk about competitive federalism.

NSW will be living the future of, well, living with Covid; and so an economy that will be on the way back to its mid-year pre-lockdown status and relative health.

Victoria will have continued to be closed right through October and “might” join NSW at some point in November when it gets to 80 per cent vac-vac.

The good news at the end of what is still a very long tunnel for 6.6m Victorians – and good news, indirectly, for the other 19.5m Australians – is that we could then move into a bonzer last six weeks or so of the year.

Fingers crossed, that is, that NSW’s opening up doesn’t turn to custard; and that the southerners follow through.

In a weird and wonderful way we are seeing a form of competitive federalism play out in commodity markets – thanks, once again, almost entirely to China.

For most of the 2020-21 financial year, iron ore prices were on a tear, hitting an unbelievable $US220 a tonne ($300).

We ship out around one billion tonnes a year.

So, do the math.

But just as they went onto the down escalator, all the way down to near $US100, coal prices – both for the coal used to make steel and the coal used to keep the lights on – started to rocket.

Thanks to China buying, whether directly or indirectly.

High iron ore prices pour money into the WA budget; coal dollars go into the NSW and Queensland budgets.