When the US sneezes, we get a cold. That's why Australia needs a Biden White House

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Opinion

When the US sneezes, we get a cold. That's why Australia needs a Biden White House

This is a bittersweet weekend to be a Melburnian. The second wave of the coronavirus is finally behind us. Only one new infection was reported on Friday, bringing the rolling 14-day average down to 5.5. That should mean a significant easing of restrictions on our movement from next week.

But first we have to reckon with the grim denouement of lockdown: an AFL grand final between two Victorian teams at Brisbane's Gabba on Saturday night, followed by a rugby league grand final played where it was always intended, in Sydney on Sunday evening. Both events will remind Melbourne of its enforced separation from the rest of the country since June.

Illustration: Simon Letch

Illustration: Simon LetchCredit: The Sydney Morning Herald

Before the pandemic, grand final week in Melbourne ran like a carnival, culminating in a cheesy Friday lunchtime parade where players on both sides were chauffeured like royalty past adorning crowds. The streets of the city buzzed into Saturday morning, but then they emptied for the game itself. One hundred thousand people were seated at the stadium, while millions more followed the play at pubs, or at home. The party resumed after the siren, as the hungover returned to the night. The Melbourne Cup compressed this week-long ritual into a single afternoon, with the city stilled for the race itself.

Lockdown has removed every part of that communal experience. This week, the streets have been empty, as they had been every other week. Stage four restrictions mean that grand final night in Melbourne will also be pin-drop quiet. The only sound you are supposed to hear are the drones of the Victoria Police which will patrol the suburbs to ensure that every Richmond, and neutral, supporter is watching the game in his or her own home, without visitors.

There is some relief in Geelong, where the townsfolk can watch the game with family, or friends, and the pubs will be opened to socially distanced fans. But Geelong supporters living in Melbourne will be subjected to same rules as we Richmond supporters. We'll be on our own, yelling together at the television.

These are the details of the pandemic that will live in our cultural memory long after we've forgotten who let the virus out of hotel quarantine.

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At the peak of the Victoria's second wave from early August to mid-September, the death toll was more than 100 a week. This week, just one death was recorded, on Monday. It is an extraordinary turnaround when country after country in Europe is breaking new daily infection records, and the United States blunders towards a third peak in its never-ending wave. Melbourne, a capital of 5 million exhausted people, is the only city of its size in the world to successfully suppress a second wave of the virus. In any other setting, we might have celebrated that achievement.

But the Commonwealth and Victorian governments have denied us even that. The months-long sniping between the two sides has shredded any shared sense of national purpose. The Victorian government certainly deserved criticism early on in the second outbreak, as the Commonwealth government did for its failure in aged care. But that fight should have ended weeks ago. Scott Morrison, no doubt mindful that he faces a federal election before Andrews goes to the polls, has toned down his own attacks. But his ministers, most notably Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, have stepped up theirs.

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Frydenberg does have policy skin in the game. With Melbourne and Victoria in lockdown, the national economy faces a double-dip recession. The Australia Bureau of Statistics reported this week that payroll jobs fell by 0.9 per cent between the week ending September 19 and the week ending October 3. The sting in this data is that Victoria and the rest of country lost jobs at roughly the same rate.

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Victoria is 23 per cent of the Australian economy and its staged re-entry into our national life between now and Christmas should translate to some form of growth.

But the Australian economy won't return to normal until we can safely reopen our borders to the rest of the world. The budget assumes this can't happen for at least another 18 months. Net overseas migration is forecast to fall by 71,600 this financial year and 21,600 in 2021-22. The last time we had more people leaving Australia than coming here in peacetime was in the 1930s.

The budget also assumes a vaccine for COVID-19 will be available next year. That may be too optimistic. What the budget doesn't say, but should have, is that the US presidential election matters as much, if not more, to our wellbeing.

A Coalition government would be too diplomatic to say these things out loud. But the US is to the global economy what Victoria is to Australia's. The US accounted for just over 24 per cent of the world's gross domestic product in 2019. While it remains in recession, so do we.

The US has just 4 per cent of the global population, but has recorded 20 per cent of all the deaths to COVID-19 so far – almost 230,000 of 1.14 million. Our borders can't open in a meaningful way while the virus continues to run unchecked in the US.

Australia needs Joe Biden to win the US election for the same reason it needs Dan Andrews to suppress the virus in Victoria. A Biden administration would take the coronavirus seriously. Donald Trump is campaigning on the assumption that enough Americans think the whole thing is still a hoax, and would prefer four more years of him at the centre of their lives.

The polls say Biden is on track for a comfortable win, perhaps even a landslide. Let's assume for a moment they are right, and consider the implications for our economy.

The virus will still have three months to burn on Trump time before a handover of power in January. It might be too late to bend the US curve by then. But if Biden did prove to be a miracle worker, it would still mean the global economy slows in the short term through the withdrawal of US demand during its lockdown. In other words, a double-dip is looming for our economy whoever wins.

History is certainly against Trump. No incumbent has won a US presidential election held during a recession, or depression. There have been five in total before this year – in 1920, 1932, 1960, 1980, and 2008 – and the White House changed parties each time. The only contest that was close was in 1960, when John Kennedy defeated Richard Nixon. The other four were landslides.

Australia doesn't quite match the consistency of the US experience. Four elections have coincided with recession, with the score three to one in favour of the opposition. The governments of James Scullin, Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser were crushed in 1931, 1975 and 1983 respectively. But Robert Menzies survived the credit squeeze election of 1961 by a single seat despite his government losing the popular vote.

Bob Hawke and Paul Keating won elections held either side of the early 1990s recession. Hawke subsequently lost his leadership in the recession itself, in 1991, and Keating was defeated in a landslide in its aftermath in 1996.

In Australia at least, pandemic is turning the rule of recession on its political head. Every federal, state and territory leader here has received personal-best approval ratings this year. And trust in democracy, which had been at record lows in 2019, has also rebounded.

Whether this new status quo holds into 2021 and beyond depends, in the end, on forces beyond the control of our leaders.

For now, I'm only game to make one prediction: Richmond by four goals.

Trump Biden 2020

Our weekly newsletter delivers expert analysis of the race to the White House from our US correspondent Matthew Knott. Sign up for The Sydney Morning Herald's newsletter here, The Age's here, Brisbane Times' here and WAtoday's here

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