IN announcing a sizeable increase in state and federal COVID assistance yesterday afternoon, Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Premier Gladys Berejiklian and Treasurer Dominic Perrottet made it abundantly clear that the Greater Sydney lockdown will continue for some time.
As political pressure increased in concert with Greater Sydney case numbers, the two governments had no real choice but to ramp up the subsidies, given the absence of JobKeeper.
Ms Berejiklian said the packages of support to workers and businesses, along with more mental health funding, were designed to give people the "peace of mind" to follow the health advice, and shorten the lockdown.
As Mr Morrison counted off the new measures at a media conference outside Kirribilli House, he was at pains to point out that the help going to NSW was in line with that given to Victoria during its months of protracted lockdown.
Importantly, the money is on offer right across NSW, regardless of whether the recipients are in or out of officially recognised "hot spots".
And in a gesture of equity that will placate the other states and territories, the new measures will apply to any future outbreaks elsewhere in Australia.
Fears that the virus may already have gone south again, with an infectious removalist driving from Sydney, have locked down an apartment block in suburban Melbourne.
There's a growing view that Australia was not aggressive enough in securing vaccines early in the piece, and there is certainly an argument to say that our approach in distributing what supplies we have has been piecemeal and lacking coherence: inoculating nursing home residents but not their staff, for example.
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We have accelerated the pace of vaccination in recent weeks, but as Mr Morrison mentioned, almost in passing, yesterday, he does not expect us to be where "everyone who wants a vaccine will get one" until "the end of the year".
Mr Perrottet stressed the economic side of the crisis, and insisted that "ultimately, we will have to learn to live alongside the virus".
We are nowhere near that. We have some tough weeks - if not months - in front of us.
The vaccine "stroll-out" has not helped Australia.
At the same time, our case rates remain globally low. In England, where PM Boris Johnson wants to end all restrictions next week, cases have risen strongly since May to top 35,000 a day, with deaths up, too, above 30 a day.
We don't want that here.
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