The Australian federal government has been aiming for a suppression strategy while the states have been eliminating the virus any time it appears anyway. We’ve had a few minor outbreaks over the last 6 months, just like NZ - and each one has been eliminated down to 0 cases again. Just like NZ. Practically speaking our policies are pretty much the same. And if either country has covid start spreading, I’m sure the international border will close again just like our interstate borders.

Exactly, and almost all of the relevant government people are organised by state rather than federally.

In aus, federal govt cares about economic issues... State govt are responsible for public health. Thus the differences in strategy are apparent.

Not quite. The federal government is responsible for primary care (i.e. seeing your GP through Medicare, Pharmaceuticals through the PBS) and aged care. States are responsible for Hospitals

In the state of Victoria, nearly seven million people were locked down hard for 112 days last year, going from a peak of 6768 active cases to zero. That ain’t suppression.

In practice Australia has implemented an elimination strategy. For some reason they don't want to say so.

My take on it is that the government may think that under an elimination strategy any community transmission events would be perceived as failures.

The other possibility might be that earlier on in the pandemic they may have thought that a suppression strategy was possible, but it turned out that it's infectious enough and behaves randomly enough (eg. occasionally huge clusters, many cases asymptomatic) that it really doesn't allow much room for suppression strategies & elimination strategies to be much different from each other.

You're probably right on both counts.

I think community transmission is already seen as a failure whether the government likes it or not, so they might as well call it elimination.

All Australian states other than New South Wales have adopted an elimination strategy as well. Here in Western Australia, we recently had a 5 day lockdown due to a single case of community transmission.

> That said, this isn't just trying to get some tourist dollars into NZ.

I heard that the NZ tourism industry had one of its best years yet in 2020 with all the domestic tourism that went on.

You've heard wrong. I went to a conference in Queenstown a month ago and the first person that spoke was involved in tourism operations there. The situation was bleak.

Here's the stats: http://snug.org.nz/assets/Uploads/03-SNUG-11-March-2021.pdf

Something 90% of tourism of NZ is domestic, so we don't really need more tourists that much.

We do indeed need more immigrants and more housing. First one won't happen as managed isolation facilities will be closed, vaccination is unclear at what stage and skilled-migrant visa class is abolished. Second won't happen as government (incl. Jacinda) is committed to protecting investors from going into negative equity.

> Something 90% of tourism of NZ is domestic,

Possibly true by numbers, but in 2018-2019 tourism revenue was about 60/40 domestic/international. https://www.stats.govt.nz/information-releases/tourism-satel...

> skilled-migrant visa class is abolished

I don't think that's true. https://www.immigration.govt.nz/new-zealand-visas/apply-for-...

> government (incl. Jacinda) is committed to protecting investors from going into negative equity.

I would have agreed with you until last week's announcements, but Labour has clearly decided to not chase the votes of property investors.

Skilled migrant visa is turning into accredited employer visa. Many of my friends who live here are stuck with draconian employers and with salaries they make there's absolutely 0 sight to buy a house.

> Labour has clearly decided to not chase the votes of property investors.

Still investors can use equity as deposit which is gonna keep the train moving up. Plus silly cost of subdividing means you have dairy enjoying million dollar views.