As Australia lurches into another round of sadly necessary lockdowns, many of us are beginning to lose patience — and with good reason. The social impacts of repeated lockdowns and border closures are devastating. While it’s clear we need lockdowns right now, there has been little level-headed discussion of their consequences or how we can avoid them in the future.

It’s true that Scott Morrison’s government has botched the vaccine rollout. Along with the Queensland government, Morrison has also given damaging and inconsistent advice on the AstraZeneca vaccine. However, the failure of Australia’s pandemic response goes far deeper than this.

Decades of privatization and cuts are ultimately to blame for Australia’s flawed pandemic response. When Labor PM Bob Hawke introduced Australia’s version of neoliberalism in the early 1980s, he began a long social transformation that hollowed out the state’s capacity to ensure our welfare. Hawke’s successor Paul Keating continued this market-driven agenda while unleashing a wave of privatization. Neoliberalism has remained a bipartisan consensus ever since.