Scott Morrison is expected to secure agreement from some but not all state and territory leaders on a definition of hotspots when they meet on Friday with a review of the current cap on international arrivals also on the agenda.
The prime minister has been ratcheting up pressure on the premiers for weeks to reopen their borders, and the commonwealth has been working up a definition of a hotspot with a view to replacing current border controls with localised lockdowns to control coronavirus outbreaks.
Morrison on Thursday urged his state and territory counterparts to come together, remove restrictions, and “make Australia whole again by Christmas”. The premiers of Victoria and New South Wales, as well as the two territory leaders, are expected to agree with the commonwealth’s approach.
But ahead of Friday’s national cabinet meeting, the premiers of other states looked highly unlikely to yield. The West Australian premier, Mark McGowan, declared border restrictions had been “successful” and Queensland has made it clear it wants to stick with the current arrangements.
Morrison has also faced pressure from the government backbench to adjust the cap on international arrivals because MPs are being deluged with constituent complaints about Australian citizens being unable to return home.
The current limit is 4,000 arrivals a week. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade estimates there are about 23,000 Australians wanting to return, up from 18,800 a fortnight ago. While the leaders will discuss the arrivals cap, the expectation going into Friday’s meeting is it won’t be adjusted at this stage.
Other issues on Friday’s agenda include an economic update, a discussion about an agricultural code giving freer cross-border movement for rural workers, and a briefing from the Bureau of Meteorology about the high-risk weather season.
Ahead of Friday’s meeting, NSW has expanded its border zone with Victoria to 50km. But according to David O’Loughlin, president of the Australian Local Government Association, there is still a litany of problems for border communities including access to medical treatment, infrastructure such as airports and schools, movement of building supplies, disrupted supply chains and “contracts that can’t be fulfilled”.
Nationals senator Matt Canavan on Thursday urged state premiers to abandon “parochialism and trivia” to ensure “health services for all Australians regardless of where they live and which side of an arbitrary border they live on”.
The agriculture minister, David Littleproud, targeted the Queensland government’s decision to allow 400 AFL players and officials into the state for the grand final to be held in Brisbane, before it had resolved the plight of teenagers at boarding schools unable to be reunited with parents on the other side of the NSW-Queensland border, saying he was “ashamed to be a Queenslander”.
Asked if the deputy prime minister, Michael McCormack, should be on the national cabinet, Canavan said “the lack of regional representation” was “certainly a gap”.
O’Loughlin told Guardian Australia although the ALGA had input into ministerial forums such as the transport and infrastructure forum which will become reform sub-committees of national cabinet, it was “not involved” in national cabinet itself. “Not even in the levels leading up to those decisions in health, border control and other issues,” he said.
National cabinet initially had a focus on fighting Covid-19 but “what’s evident is that it had to go beyond a health management crisis to managing movement of people, economic productivity impacts and freedom of movement” – all things that required a local voice.
“We would argue for zones instead of hard state borders as an alternative [if we were included],” O’Loughlin said.
“There are clearly communities that straddle state borders that have not been interrupted by borders for decades. The blunt instrument that states are using is an impediment to health and education and the economy and productivity of those regions. Local government knows those regions intimately, we would have alternate proposals.”
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