Delay in vaccine rollout ‘not expected to derail’ economic recovery, Australian treasurer says
The Morrison government looks set to revisit in the looming May budget a key underlying assumption from last year’s mid-year economic forecast that a population-wide Covid-19 vaccination program would be fully in place by late 2021.
But the treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, has declared the delay of the vaccination rollout “is not expected to derail momentum in our economic recovery”.
Scott Morrison late on Sunday admitted that all Australians may not be vaccinated by year’s end. The prime minister said in a statement uploaded to Facebook there would be no new timetable to replace the previous October
target.
With the government taking heavy political fire for bungling the critical vaccine rollout, Morrison took to Facebook once again late on Monday to try and reassure the public.
In a Facebook live session, Morrison said frontline health workers and the elderly would be inoculated under current arrangements as winter closed in, and the vaccination program would ramp up for the “balance of the population” later in the year.
“I’ve been asked a bit about what our targets are,” Morrison said.
“One of the things about Covid is it writes its own rules. You don’t get to set the agenda – you have to be able to respond quickly when things change. Rather than set targets that can get knocked about by every to and fro – international supply chains and other disruptions that have occurred – we are just getting on with it.”
Labor said on Monday the government would need to revisit the Myefo assumption on 11 May. The shadow treasurer, Jim Chalmers, declared it would stretch credibility for the government “to now pretend their vaccine debacle won’t impact the budget or the economy”.
The mid-year economic forecast last December assumed that a Covid-19 vaccine would be available in Australia by March 2021, with a population-wide vaccination program fully in place by late 2021.
That forecast assumed there would be no state border restrictions in place throughout 2021, and that temporary and permanent migration would return gradually from late 2021.
Morrison said on Monday evening the international border would remain closed because “around the world Covid-19 is still rife”.
“We will keep moving quickly to vaccinate our most vulnerable population and we’ll keep those borders closed for as long as we have to, but only as long as we have to,” the prime minister said.
The government will update its economic forecasts on 11 May, when it hands down the budget. As well as attempting to reassure the public on Monday night, Morrison flagged more stimulatory measures in the budget “that build on the work that was done by jobkeeper and jobseeker to ensure the Australian economy keeps leading the world out of the recession that was caused by Covid-19”.
Morrison reconfigured the vaccination timetable due to blood clot warnings applied to the AstraZeneca vaccination. With concerns rising about vaccine hesitancy in the wake of the revised timetable, the prime minister said on Monday night the vaccine was safe for people over 50 according to the “very strong” medical advice.
In terms of the impact of the delay on the economy and the budget, it is possible the current strength of the economic recovery will ultimately net out the impact of a delayed vaccination rollout, assuming that Australia can get through another winter without sustained lockdowns.
Frydenberg said in a statement to
Guardian Australia on Monday the Australian economy outperformed every major advanced economy in 2020 and “with the successful suppression of the virus and substantial reopening of the economy, both household and business confidence are now higher than before the pandemic”.
“While the continued vaccine rollout is an important step in protecting Australians against the threat of the virus, the timing of the rollout is not expected to derail momentum in our economic recovery,” the treasurer said.
The latest Deloitte Access Economics
business outlook, released on Monday, found that living standards in Australia increased during 2020 at a faster rate than the average over the past decade despite the country enduring the first recession in three decades because of the shock caused by the pandemic.
The fillip was attributable to surging commodity prices and rock-bottom interest rates.
But the Deloitte assessment assumed virus numbers would stay suppressed in Australia, with herd immunity achieved by late 2021 or early 2022 – a timetable now in doubt due to the revamp of the vaccine rollout.
Labor says the botched vaccination rollout is a public policy debacle that imperils Australia’s continuing economic recovery.
“We can’t have a first-rate economic recovery with Scott Morrison’s thirdrate vaccine rollout,” Chalmers said on Monday.
“It stretches credibility for the government to now pretend their vaccine debacle won’t impact the budget or the economy. The government’s failures on jabs will have consequences for jobs because delay after delay risks more lockdowns.”
Figures released on Sunday show 1.16m vaccinations have now been dispensed, with about half delivered by the commonwealth through the GP network and in aged and disability care, and the other half delivered through state vaccination hubs.
The New South Wales premier, Gladys Berejiklian, said the Morrison government needed to maintain a sense of urgency with the program and the public should not be lulled by any false sense of security.
“I know that some people don’t think there is a sense of urgency because we’re doing so well, but things can change very quickly and I don’t want to see our citizens left behind because the rest of the world starts trading
with each other, starts travelling,” the premier said.
“I do have a sense of urgency about
it”.
Epidemiologist Prof Mary-Louise McLaws, who advises the World Health Organization, said on Monday it would take “a couple of years” to fully vaccinate the Australian population if the rollout continued at the current rate. She told the ABC ramping up the number of vaccinations to between 100,000 and 120,000 per day would require “a lot of logistics” and for state governments to create mass vaccination sites.