With election drumbeats a little louder, Morrison leans further into Fortress Australia

Scott Morrison isn’t making many promises. But he’s adamant Australia’s international borders won’t open any time soon.

Last week’s budget assumed international travel and foreign students and permanent migrants returning would not kick in until 2022. And it’s a delay the prime minister seems comfortable with.

“Even in that circumstance, you’re still talking about many Australians, millions of Australians, who wouldn’t have been vaccinated because for (a) they’re children or (b) they have chosen not to be,” he said, when asked if the borders should open if all Australians were vaccinated by the end of the year.

“And you’re also making assumptions about what the rest of the world looks like with COVID at the end of this year, the introduction of new variants and strains.”

It’s a sign Morrison, with an election due in the next 12 months and after watching the successes of state premiers’ tough borders approach, is ready to bunker down in Fortress Australia.

He’s also seen where the voters are at: the most recent Newspoll found 73% of voters wanted borders closed until mid next year.

But Morrison’s rhetoric has shifted as the prospect of an election draws closer. Last June he said he would “push the envelope as much as possible” to get business travellers into Australia. Throughout last year he spoke of opening travel bubble arrangements with countries like South Korea and Japan. By late last year he seemed optimistic about the state of the pandemic across north Asia, and said the government was “looking at what alternative arrangements could be had to channel visitors through appropriate quarantine arrangements for low-risk countries”. Australians could expect a different environment in 2021.

Morrison’s talk of travel bubbles, and optimism about international arrivals has dwindled. By December he was hinting it was unlikely international would resume in the first six months of this year.

The rhetoric around bringing stranded Australians home has also hardened over the past few months. Last September Morrison said he wanted Australia to return to as much normalcy as possible by Christmas, chiding state premiers for their risk-averse approach to internal border closures. At the same time he vowed to have as many Australians as possible stranded overseas home by Christmas.

But Christmas fizzled after a hotel quarantine breach in Sydney.

In January, the government reduced the cap on international arrivals in hotel quarantine, responding to a new, more virulent strain of COVID-19 in the United Kingdom.

Morrison started to concede international travel wouldn’t return this year, and started responding to questions by talking up the benefits to the domestic tourism sector of Australians being stuck at home.

“In this unusual time, Australians who are big overseas travellers are increasingly in a position and will want to more and more see their own country. So that’s going to have its obvious impact,” he said while in regional Queensland.

As the vaccine rollouts slowed, immunisation targets became increasingly vague, and a devastating wave in India spiralled out of control, the government doubled down on Fortress Australia and raised alarm about opening the borders.

Last month Morrison warned that international arrivals would bring thousands of new cases a day. Weeks later, he introduced the India travel ban and harsh, unprecedented criminal sanctions for anyone returning from there.

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph last week, Morrison fully embraced a future of tough borders.

“We sit here in an island that’s living like few countries in the world,” he said. “We have to be careful not to exchange that way of life for what everyone else has.”

And with most voters happy for it to stay that way, Morrison won’t be in any hurry to heed the calls from business and some in his own party to open up. Not until after the election at least.

Should the PM be making vital decisions with an election top of mind? Let us know what you think by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication in Crikey’s Your Say section.