It’s an honour to rise to support the Treasury Laws Amendment (COVID-19 Economic Response No. 2) Bill 2021 and, in doing so, to continue the government’s efforts to provide support to people through these very difficult and costly times for our nation. We have provided well over $300 billion of assistance across the Australian economy since early last year. The government have always been willing to respond as necessary to people’s needs during this time, but we must also recognise the enormous cost that has come to our nation’s balance sheet and our nation’s wealth. This will limit the options that future generations of Australians have, because they will be burdened with a much bigger debt than they expected just 18 months ago. In fact, our debt now, approaching $1 trillion, is the highest it has been as a share of our economy since the end of World War II. As a nation we face a lot of threats and challenges beyond the coronavirus, and we must make sure we do all we can to maintain our fiscal strength in helping future generations of Australians to respond to these challenges.
I want to start by responding to some of the points made in this debate, particularly by those opposite. Some have suggested that all we need to do is get the vaccination rate up and then it will be back to business as usual. The sun will come up, lockdowns will end and there’ll be no more coronavirus—it’ll all be gone. That’s not what the modelling showed yesterday. It is past time as a nation that we in this place, of all people, be upfront with the Australian people and get rid of the fantasy and fairytales that we are continually trying to put the Australian people to sleep with. We should front up to them with the facts and the reality of this terrible pandemic and what might happen in the next few years in this country regardless of what we do or how many people get vaccinated in the months ahead. That was revealed yesterday in the modelling.
Perhaps the most revealing figure in the Doherty institute modelling was that, even in an environment where 80 per cent of Australians get vaccinated, which is the target to get to phase 4 of the plan, within 180 days of hitting that 80 per cent target and reverting to some baseline restrictions, while still testing and tracing—and I’ll come back to that—40,000 vaccinated Australians will become symptomatically infectious with the coronavirus. So far, in the first 18 months of this pandemic, 34,800 Australians—or it might be 34,300—have been infected with coronavirus. So, even when 80 per cent of Australians are vaccinated, within six months more vaccinated Australians will pick up a symptomatic version of the coronavirus. We need to face up to that. It’s more than that—that’s just people who are vaccinated. You can have these things called breakthrough infections.
I am pro-vaccination. I am planning to get mine. I encourage everyone to do the same. But, again, we have to be upfront with the Australian people. The evidence is people still can and do, quite commonly overseas, pick up a coronavirus infection despite being vaccinated. It does, of course, greatly reduce their risk of death or hospitalisation. On top of the 40,000 people who would unfortunately get the coronavirus, even with the vaccination, another 238,991—let’s call it 240,000-odd—Australians who are unvaccinated would also become infectious with the coronavirus within six months. So let’s be upfront with the Australian people: even at an 80 per cent vaccination rate, within six months we would be looking at 280,000 coronavirus infections, well above—seven times—what we have experienced in the first 18 months of this pandemic. That is the reality and the truth of the situation we’re facing. And those 280,000 coronavirus infections would be in a world where we still had a two-square-metre rule; they would be in a world, according to this modelling, where we would still have only 70 per cent capacity at sporting stadiums. We wouldn’t go back to full crowds in this world where we had 280,000 coronavirus infections. It would be a world where we still had testing, tracing, isolation and quarantine. So if you went to a place or you were unfortunate to be in a place where one of those 280,000 infections occurred, you would then have to quarantine as well. It will not return to normal, even with those figures, even with that vaccination rate, and it is high time we recognised that fact.
It would also be the case, if people picked up infections, that they would go to hospital. People will, unfortunately, die, and we need to be upfront with people about that. The government cannot save every life. The government cannot get rid of the two certainties in life, one of which is death. Possibly we could get rid of taxes—we could possibly do that—but I don’t think we will; that certainty will still be there for people too. Under this modelling, with an 80 per cent vaccination rate across Australia, within 180 days around 2,000 Australians would be admitted to ICU wards and over 1,000 people would die, including 439 people who were vaccinated. They would unfortunately die, according to this modelling.
Again, the vaccinations aren’t perfect. I’m pro-vaccine. But we cannot keep telling people the fantasy that we can solve all of these problems. If we don’t be upfront with the Australian people, we will not be able to get out of this and we will continue these very cruel lockdowns, which are causing enormous costs on our economy and particularly on people. I am against the lockdowns. The evidence we have seen this week has shown why that should be the case. A part of the reason is that these lockdowns just kick the can down the road. As those figures show, we will eventually, even with vaccination, still end up in an environment with infections, with deaths, with fatalities. We are not comparing here a cost today for infection tomorrow; that is an unattainable promise that should not be made to the Australian people. We are facing the situation of any road being a difficult one for us to venture along. The key thing, though, is to choose which road, which path, can lead to the lowest cost for all Australians, not just to focus on one thing—the coronavirus.
There are daily press conferences where we focus on how many cases there are, whether or not someone has tragically died from coronavirus overnight. Unfortunately, it is a common tendency for people to manage what is measured. We are measuring the coronavirus very minutely at the moment, so we are obsessed with managing it. There are no press conferences, though, about the number of small businesses that went to the wall last night in Australia. There are no press conferences which tell us all how many marriages broke up last night because of the stress of people being in lockdown. There are no press conferences telling us how many people had lost their jobs and were at their wit’s end overnight because of these lockdowns. And because we are not measuring those costs, they are being ignored and are not being factored into proper decision-making.
Unfortunately, the decisions to lock down are being made by people here and in parliaments at the state level. None of us, and none of the advisers and public servants who are informing us on these decisions, bear a cost of the lockdown in any true sense. We still get paid. We still have a job. We can still pay our mortgages and keep our houses. We are in what’s called the laptop class. I can work off a laptop. In fact, I’ll share a little secret: I kind of like lockdowns. I’m sorry; I don’t like the fact that we have to do them. But I can stay at home with my family. I don’t have to travel. I don’t have to go to boring meetings or functions. It’s fantastic. But there are a whole lot of people out there in this country for whom it’s not good. For them, lockdowns are no fun. They lose their jobs. They lose their business. Where in this parliament and this place is the voice for them? Who is giving them dignity by standing up for them against the cost of these lockdowns that are being imposed by people who don’t have to bear the cost themselves, don’t have to take a pay cut, don’t have to stay awake at night thinking about how they’re going to pay their mortgage and don’t have to stay awake at night thinking about how they’re going to make up the payroll for their employees? Where are the people advocating for them? There are an enormous number—millions—of Australians now facing that situation, and we ignore them by continuing these lockdowns, which are far too costly.
We deserve a proper assessment of the costs of this approach. I welcome the figures that were released by the government yesterday, but they didn’t amount to a costing of lockdowns. They are a costing of the four-phase plan—a costing of different vaccination levels and what they mean—and the conclusions are clear: high vaccination rates are good, and they are what we should be aiming for. They will lower the cost of any strategy. Any particular response to the coronavirus will be better and less costly the more people we can get vaccinated, and that should absolutely be our goal. But the modelling released yesterday assumed that we would impose lockdowns at certain levels of coronavirus spread, so it did not actually assess whether or not a lockdown strategy was less costly, even just in economic terms, let alone in terms of mental health and the other issues I’ve spoken about. It did not assess whether that is less costly than an approach which is more focused on testing, tracing, isolation, quarantine and reasonable restrictions and measures that fall short of putting everybody out of work—or at least putting everybody not in the laptop class out of work.
We deserve that. We deserve to do that for the millions of Australians who do not have the same flexibility that we in this place have. To be upfront with them about how much this is costing them and whether, in fact, it is the right decision for all, we should be providing them with that information. There are limited figures out there about what these lockdowns are costing, but you can make a pretty clear estimation of the massive costs of some. There was some modelling by a different organisation, the Burnet Institute, another respected group of virologists. They said this week that the New South Wales lockdowns had avoided 4,000 coronavirus cases. I have no reason to dispute their figures, so 4,000 coronavirus cases have been avoided. At that stage the New South Wales lockdown had gone on for 35 days. AMP estimate that the lockdowns are costing $150 million a day. That probably seems like an underestimate, especially given the extra support we’re providing now, but, regardless, let’s take it as $150 million a day. So, at the 35-day mark, the lockdowns had cost $5.3 billion to avoid 4,000 coronavirus cases.
Simple mathematics shows that that means we are spending $1.3 million to avoid each and every coronavirus case. That is $1.3 million for each case—not a fatality, not an admission to an ICU ward, but for each case. That’s just the economic cost. That doesn’t include the impact on people’s marriages, their small businesses and their long-term health. This is way out of whack, and it’s perhaps the reason we haven’t got proper costings for this or what it is costing our economy, our society and our communities right now. The figures would be eye-watering and indefensible, because it is indefensible to spend that amount of money to avoid one coronavirus case. We do not apply that in any other public policy issue. Twenty thousand Australians a year die from smoking, 5,000 die from alcohol and around 1,000 die on our roads. We do not ban these things; we live with them. We realise we can’t avoid every risk. We let people get on with their lives and make their own decisions about that balance.
What would be best, sooner rather than later, is if we restored the principle of personal responsibility and people making their own judgements about risk. Those of us that are lucky enough to work from home can still choose to do that. If we got rid of lockdowns, you could still do that. I could work from home on my laptop—I didn’t have to be here this week—and I could avoid or limit my trips outside. You could do that. But imposing that lifestyle on people who don’t have the same flexibility as you is immoral. It is extremely painful for those Australians who are suffering right now under an imposed, government enforced, police backed and, now, Army backed lockdown of their lives. We have to restore some balance to this debate and be upfront with the Australian people about what the future holds, and the future holds whatever we choose. Whatever vaccination rates we go for, coronavirus will spread. We must learn to live with this virus.
