Because the federal government is full of incompetent conservative fuckwits that couldn't organise a root in a brothel and would struggle to win 5% of the vote without decades of the worst Murdoch propaganda behind them that makes Fox News look reasonable.

We have one of the worst governments in the entire democratic world. We just got insanely lucky that at the start of the pandemic they decided to lay off as much responsibility as possible to the state governments who have mostly been fantastic.