Description
The COVID-19 pandemic has elicited a wide range of national responses and outcomes in terms of infections and mortalities. Australia’s success in keeping infections and deaths low appears puzzling, since it adopted many of the same neoliberal reforms that led to failure in other countries. This has been explained as resulting from Australian leaders’ choices. We argue that while political choices matter, the options available to leaders and whether these are implemented effectively are still shaped by the legacy of neoliberal state transformation processes. Decades of neoliberal reforms have hollowed out state capacity and confused lines of control and accountability, leaving Australia unprepared for the pandemic. Leaders thus abandoned plans and turned to ad hoc emergency measures – border closures and lockdowns – which averted large-scale outbreaks and deaths, but at a high cost. By mid-2021, while other developed countries began returning to some normalcy, Australia remained stuck with the same emergency measures, increasingly failing to contain the more transmissible Delta variant. Notwithstanding leaders’ choices, Australia’s regulatory state has failed to deliver an effective quarantine system, crucial for border controls, and vaccination program, essential for exiting the pandemic.
