Australia’s vaccine debacle continues today. The latest leaderboard has us leapfrogging Lebanon and Sri Lanka closing in on the West Indies!
But, if you’re a sinking prime minister, you can always manipulate the data:
So, the starting point in the race is not when the gun goes off, it’s when you got up after falling on your face. Noice.
Alas, Australia’s acceleration through the Third World pack is going to come to a halt. When at first you don’t succeed, lower your standards:
- PM Morrison offering no new vaccine timelines.
- PM Morrison offering no guarantee that every (or any) Australian will get access by year-end.
The practical and political problems are still multiplying:
- If we get a major outbreak, the advice to get AZ will change. Which is pretty silly because we’ll be locked down well and truly long before that happens.
- Doctors are pulling out of the program because their legal liabilities pertaining to AZ are now unclear with no advice from government. Or not.
- The vaccine failure is adding insult to injury for the 40k Australians still marooned overseas.
- Probity is out the window with Coalition mates raking in millions as the undertaking struggles. PwC, Accenture, DHL, Linfox, Healthcare Australia, International SOS, Sonic Clinical Services and Aspen are all on the books but nobody knows how much and what for.
- Having all along insisted no mass vaccination centres are required, the government is considering mass vaccination centres.
- There will be no change to the fiscal withdrawal which will mean the economy is slowing fast through H2 and into 2022, just in time for the election!
Commentary is damning across the board:
- Murdoch is scornful as the Sun King hedges his bets.
- McKell expects more lockdowns as a result of the rollout failure.
- Kevin Rudd accuses Scott Morrison of gaslighting. Some irony there. Julia Gillard anyone?
- Public support ebbing for PM.
- No PM is more committed to undermining confidence.
I could go on but there’s not much point. We’ll settle down now into a relentless drumbeat of bad press and bad comparisons to other countries, plus new lockdowns.
It will run all year alongside Rapegate and the Government will obviously struggle to turn the polls.
