• The most likely result of Australia’s troubled vaccine rollout will be a program that concludes up to a year from now says Michael Buckland, executive director of policy think tank the McKell Institute.
• With the end of JobKeeper, government support and the New Zealand travel bubble aren’t enough to enable economic growth, Buckland said.
• Modelling by the McKell Institute around the cost of Australia’s vaccine program delays found it could cost the economy up to $1.4 billion.
• Visit Business Insider Australia’s homepage for more stories.

The longer Australia’s vaccination delays compound, the further Australia is liable to fall behind comparable nation’s economic recovery, according to economists at a leading policy institute.

While the national cabinet met today to discuss how to push Australia’s troubled vaccine rollout back on track, even in the absolute best case scenario vaccinations will be completed a full six months after they kick off, according to Michael Buckland, executive director of policy think tank the McKell Institute.

What’s more likely, as time goes on and delays compound, is that Australia will emulate Germany, which will result in full vaccinations up to a year later than planned.

While the opening today of a travel bubble with New Zealand will support airlines, which have reported significant losses since the pandemic began in March 2020, it’s not nearly enough to enable the kind of economic recovery required, Buckland said.

National airline Qantas had forecast that its international flights will resume this October, however on Thursday 15, CEO Alan Joyce conceded its original timeline was now unlikely, though it is still gearing up in anticipation for flights overseas to resume before the end of the year.

Qantas recently reported it had lost $11 billion in revenue last year and increased its debt by $2.5 billion since the pandemic began.

Similarly affected by vaccine delays are tourism and the university sector, Buckland said, two of Australia’s leading economic drivers.

“We rely on trade and tourism and we can’t do that when we’re shut down,” he said, “Vaccinations are the only way.”

A report by the McKell Institute, “Counting the Cost of Australia’s Delayed Vaccine Rollout” revealed projections showing that failing to speed up Australia’s vaccination rollout will increase the risk of new COVID-19 outbreaks and snap lockdowns.

It compared the vaccination rates in Israel, the US, UK, France, Canada and Germany to determine the possible speed of Australia’s rollout, with a worst case scenario projection suggesting that delays to the vaccine rollout could end up costing up to $1.4 billion for the Australian economy.

While it always takes a while to ramp up a vaccination program, Buckland said, it’s now almost impossible for Australia to meet its stated October timeline for a fully vaccinated Australia.

“For us to catch up to what we had planned to do, we need to vaccinate at 15 times the rate of the current vaccination program,” he said.

Buckland said his team began developing modeling in April, “when things started to go poorly,” with the goal of developing projections that would help provide clarity for the Australian public around the risks of delays to the vaccine rollout.

“We as a team have been worried about the lack of ongoing support for the economy,” he said.

“There will be more lockdowns as a result of this. We wanted to quantify it.”

The government’s strategy of supply-side support encouraging consumers to purchase goods and business to stay in the economy has now ended, Buckland said, with JobSeeker and JobSeeker finishing at the end of March.

This year was supposed to be about switching from supply side support to increased demand in order to help businesses scale back up.

But the delays to the vaccination program mean that there’s no stopgap between the two, and he said he thinks the government’s policy should be updated to reflect this failure.

“When that changes, well then shouldn’t your policy setting change with it?”

The consequence of delays will be a high probability of lockdowns occurring every month or so over the next year, with the ongoing uncertainty meaning businesses are unlikely to make decisions, like increasing their hires, that will provide the required boost to the economy.

“This uncertainty is a barrier to us growing,” he said.

“You can do it both ways; you can either speed up the vaccine rollout and then give less support to the economy, or you can give more support to the economy to make up for the fact that you’re having a slower vaccine rollout.”

“But doing neither is just economically irresponsible.”

“I think [NSW Premier] Gladys Berejiklian hit it on the head the other day when she said we risk missing out,” he said.

“Every passing day it looks less and less likely.”

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