Is the Morrison government picking favourites for state COVID-19 relief?

The Morrison government was always quick to praise NSW's no-lockdown approach to handling outbreaks. Now that the delta variant has smashed that narrative, is Morrison's bias showing?

Scott Morrison’s plan to provide further economic support to locked-down NSW was met with fury south of the Murray. The Victorian government says the more generous package is a sign NSW is getting special treatment. Treasurer Josh Frydenberg says it’s because the NSW lockdown is longer — and has been extended for at least another two weeks today. He wants Victoria to stop whingeing.

So who’s right here?

The packages compared

On June 3, as Victoria’s lockdown entered its second week, Morrison and Frydenberg outlined a package to support workers. To get payments, people had to jump through several hoops. First, they would have to live in an area declared a COVID hotspot by the Commonwealth, and lose income due to restrictions that lasted longer than a week. To be eligible, recipients had to have liquid assets of under $10,000. They’d receive $500 per week for losing over 20 hours of work, and $325 if they lost less. At the time, there was no suggestion payments would be expanded if the lockdown was extended.

Those payments kicked in after a week of Sydney’s lockdown. But as the lockdown entered a third week, Morrison removed the liquid assets test on support payments. “I should stress that takes us beyond what we’ve recently seen in Victoria,” he said.

Yesterday, with the Sydney lockdown certain to be extended, Morrison unveiled further support for NSW. Where a lockdown enters its fourth week, the payments will increase to $600 for someone who loses more than 20 hours, and $375 if they lose between eight and 20 hours. The package also provides support for businesses which demonstrate a 30% decline in turnover.

The new package comes a week after Frydenberg insisted the government wasn’t bringing back JobKeeper. But Morrison has continued to compare the NSW package to JobKeeper in terms of its impact.

Meanwhile, Frydenberg and Morrison have pointed to the government’s generous support for Melbourne during the city’s long lockdown last year, claiming Victoria received more JobKeeper per capita than any other state. But given Victoria spent more than twice as long in lockdown, the state actually received substantially less in JobKeeper per day in lockdown than NSW did.

Who’s right?

Technically the government is correct to suggest that the payments in NSW have increased because the state’s lockdown has. Because Victoria’s most recent lockdown lasted just two weeks, we don’t know whether payments would have increased there too.

“If tomorrow Victoria were to go into a lengthy lockdown … they’d get exactly what we announced yesterday,” Frydenberg said this morning.

But yesterday’s announcement comes after a sharp difference in rhetoric around lockdowns in the two states. And it’s this difference in tone that has aggravated Victoria. Morrison seemed far more reluctant to offer support to the state when it entered its lockdown in late May. Frydenberg refused JobKeeper, and a day before announcing the support package, Morrison’s office was briefing that the government didn’t want to incentivise states going into lockdown when they didn’t need to.

Last year Frydenberg attacked Melbourne’s long lockdown for its impacts on mental health, hitting out at the Andrews government’s failures on hotel quarantine. He’s been far less bullish in pointing out the Berejiklian government’s missteps.

The narrative was very different back when the government introduced its disaster payments in Victoria. NSW was the gold standard state, which had successfully controlled outbreaks without burdening its citizens with lockdowns. Victoria has been perceived as overly cautious, so scarred by the experience of 2020 that it couldn’t deal with a handful of cases without the blunt hammer of lockdown.

Some Liberal MPs derived far too much glee lauding the comparative success of a Coalition-run state over a Labor one. Morrison praised NSW for never going into lockdown just days before NSW went into lockdown.

But the Delta variant smashed that narrative. And now, no matter what the government says about what it would’ve done for Victoria, it’ll never escape being accused of playing favourites.