The New South Wales premier tried and failed on Friday to secure more doses of the Pfizer vaccine. Scott Morrison could not be seen to be ‘the prime minister for NSW’
By all accounts, Gladys Berejiklian already knew her public pleading for more vaccine supply had fallen on the barren ground before she gathered with Scott Morrison and the other premiers virtually for the latest national cabinet meeting.
The New South Wales premier came to Friday afternoon’s conversation with her peers armed with a number of requests. But when her time came to speak, Berejiklian acknowledged upfront the additional doses she’d asked for to combat the “national emergency” weren’t going to be forthcoming.
The premier did ask whether or not the commonwealth was prepared to re-allocate doses of Pfizer that had been marked for distribution to GP clinics. Berejiklian wanted that supply redirected to the state-run clinics that would focus on vaccinating people in southwest Sydney – her argument being the current lockdown wasn’t enough to contain this dangerous Delta outbreak.
But that request got a firm no too from the federal officials. One senior official asked the premier (overly aggressively by some accounts) whether she was asking people to cancel their appointments. Morrison told Berejiklian he wasn’t in the business of taking Pfizer doses away from GPs.
Morrison then invited the other premiers to ask questions or make reflections. The West Australian premier, Mark McGowan, queried whether the lockdown Berejiklian had imposed was a serious lockdown given he’d seen pictures of people massing on Bondi beach.
Daniel Andrews wondered whether Berejiklian had modelling to back her approach, and the chief minister of the Australian Capital Territory, Andrew Barr (for obvious reasons given the territory has a porous border and zero cases) asked whether there was a functioning ring of steel between Sydney and the rest of the country. There was a discussion about what role the defence forces might play.
Given lockdowns had been raised, Morrison (who only a few weeks ago pointedly praised Berejiklian for not rushing to lock down Sydney) professed himself fully on board with tough restrictions. But he noted they needed to be effective.
Morrison said that any lockdown that went on for longer than a week and wasn’t seen to work, would undermine community support for public health restrictions.
And that, the prime minister said, would turn into a “shit show”.
Perhaps some gathered around the virtual table thought the actual “shit show” was Morrison’s predilection for shape-shifting – but I admit, that’s speculation on my part.
Going into Friday’s meeting, some of the premiers did wonder whether they were walking into a stitch-up, given the drama of Berejiklian’s pre-positioning.
They wondered whether the premier’s declaration of a national emergency and her argument that vaccines needed to be redirected to Sydney urgently, reflected some pre-agreement with Morrison.
The passage of time has taught premiers to keep their wits about them. When these leaders invented the national cabinet on the hop in a football stadium in Parramatta in March 2020, during the first wave of the pandemic, there was a strong sense of solidarity that bridged the partisan differences.
While this national cabinet – a governance structure to manage a federated crisis – continues to function, there are now a bunch of accumulated resentments that hover in the room, like hungry ghosts.
Andrews, who was once close to Morrison (the prime minister once told me their partnership was the “key fusion” in the federation) feels (entirely correctly) that the prime minister shafted him with all the politicking from Canberra during Victoria’s long (but ultimately successful) lockdown during the second wave.
Andrews and Berejiklian worked closely during the opening months of the pandemic to push Morrison into accepting public health restrictions when the prime minister resisted that approach.