COVID-19 and the Pathologies of Australia’s Regulatory State

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has elicited a wide range of national responses with an even wider range of outcomes in terms of infections and mortalities. Australia is a rare success story, keeping deaths comparatively low, and infections too, until the Omicron wave. What explains Australia’s success? Typical explanations emphasise leaders’ choices. We agree, but argue that leaders’ choices, and whether these are implemented effectively, is shaped by the legacy of state transformation. Decades of neo-liberal 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, simple to implement emergency measures – border closures and lockdowns. These averted large-scale outbreaks and deaths, but with diminishing returns as the Delta variant took hold. Conversely, Australia’s regulatory state has struggled to deliver more sophisticated policy responses, even when leaders were apparently committed, including an effective quarantine system, crucial for border controls, and vaccination programme, essential for exiting the quagmire of lockdowns and closed borders, leading to a partial return to top-down governing. The Australian experience shows that to avoid a public health catastrophe or more damaging lockdowns in the next pandemic, states must re-learn to govern.

Key Words:

• Australia
• COVID-19
• neo-liberalism
• regulatory state
• state capacity
• state transformation

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Lee Jones, Susan Sell, and the reviewers and editor of the Journal of Contemporary Asia for their valuable comments on earlier drafts of this article. The authors have greatly benefited from feedback received from colleagues at the Politics, Policy and Political Economy Research Group in the School of Political Science and International Studies, University of Queensland, the Australian National University’s RegNet, and the Australian International Political Economy Network workshop. They also thank Monica DiLeo for her excellent research assistance. The usual caveats apply.

Notes

1 “Lockdown” here refers to governments ordering residents to stay at home, except when engaged in “essential” activities, and where failure to comply carries a penalty.

2 Although influenza and COVID-19 are not identical, as respiratory illnesses with no initial vaccination many of the same planning assumptions were adopted and adapted in Australia’s February 2020 COVID-19 Plan (Bromfield 2021, 652).

3 National Cabinet was established on March 13, 2020 as a forum for the prime minister, premiers, and chief ministers to discuss and co-ordinate the response to COVID-19.