Events from the decade 2020s in Australia.
46th Parliament, 2019–2022
General history At the 2019 election, in the 151-seat House of Representatives, the incumbent Coalition government was reelected with 77 seats, a majority of two seats. The Labor opposition won 68 seats. Six other MPs were elected to the crossbench, with the Greens, Centre Alliance, Katter's Australian Party, and independents Andrew Wilkie, Helen Haines and Zali Steggall winning a seat each.
In the Senate, 40 of 76 seats were up for election. Following the election, the Coalition had a total of 35 seats, four short of a majority. Labor held 26 seats, the Greens held 9 seats, Centre Alliance and One Nation each held two seats, the Jacqui Lambie Network held one and one seat was held by independent Cory Bernardi, who deregistered the party he was previously a member of on 25 June 2019.
Following the Coalition's victory in the 2019 federal election, the Second Morrison Ministry was formed in 2019; this succeeded the First Morrison Ministry, which was dissolved in May 2019. In Foreign Affairs, the Morrison government concluded the Indonesia-Australia Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, and signed the AUKUS trilateral security pact between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. On the economy, after the lowest deficit in a decade, Morrison predicted a small surplus in the 2019 Federal Budget, however the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic led to a dramatic increase in government expenditure. Pandemic management became a core focus of the Morrison government, which instigated tight border controls and a program of income support for business and workers. Two years into the pandemic, Australia had achieved one of the lowest death rates and highest vaccination rates in the world.
Specific issues and events
Bushfires Political and social debate surrounded many aspects of the 2019–20 Australian bushfire season, particularly regarding the causes and future prevention of such fire activity, and the role of climate change. Amid a conservative government that received noted criticism for its climate change inaction and support for fossil fuel industries, growing acknowledgement within the nation's politics and society of the issue of climate change in Australia resulted in a highly political agenda to the crisis response. The governing Liberal and National parties, accompanied by numerous news outlets associated with climate change denial, firmly deflected responsibility away from the record-breaking drought affecting the country and its associated links to climate change observations and projections.
Further controversy has surrounded Prime Minister Scott Morrison for taking an overseas family holiday to Hawaii, United States, during the bushfires. These criticisms also applied to New South Wales Minister for Emergency Services David Elliot, who went for a holiday in Europe. Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk was also criticised for holidaying on a cruise ship while fires were active in the state. While travelling throughout fire-affected towns in New South Wales, Morrison was filmed attempting to shake the hands of two residents in Cobargo who had refused to shake his outstretched hand. Morrison was criticised for grabbing and then shaking their hands despite their refusals.
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic in Australia is part of the ongoing worldwide pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 () caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (). The first confirmed case in Australia was identified on 25 January 2020, in Victoria, when a man who had returned from Wuhan, China, tested positive for SARS-CoV-2.
Australian borders were closed to all non-residents on 20 March. Social distancing rules were imposed on 21 March and state governments started to close "non-essential" services. "Non-essential services" included social gathering venues such as pubs and clubs but unlike many other countries did not include most business operations such as construction, manufacturing and many retail categories.
The number of new cases initially grew sharply, then levelled out at about 350 per day around 22 March, and started falling at the beginning of April to under 20 per day by the end of the month. This page is continually updated with new data. The very last day may appear inaccurate as more data becomes available. As of 8 June 2020, 3 pm, 7,265 cases and 102 deaths had been reported in Australia, with the highest number of cases being in New South Wales, with 3,112.
Pandemic economic response
The federal government announced an economic stimulus package to combat the effects of coronavirus on the economy.
On 12 March 2020 the government announced a billion stimulus package, the first since the 2008 financial crisis. The package consists of multiple parts, a one-off A$750 payment to around 6.5 million welfare recipients as early as 31 March 2020, small business assistance with 700,000 grants up to $25,000 and a 50% wage subsidy for 120,000 apprentices or trainees for up to 9 months, 1 billion to support economically impacted sectors, regions and communities, and $700 million to increase tax write off and $3.2 billion to support short-term small and medium-sized business investment.
On 30 March the Australian Government announced a $130 billion "JobKeeper" wage subsidy program. The JobKeeper program would pay employers up to $1500 a fortnight per full-time, part-time or casual employee that has worked for that business for over a year. For a business to be eligible, they must have lost 30% of turnover after 1 March of annual revenue up to and including $1 billion. For businesses with a revenue of over $1 billion, turnover must have decreased by 50%. Businesses are then required by law to pay the subsidy to their staff, in lieu of their usual wages. This response came after the enormous job losses seen just a week prior when an estimated 1 million Australians lost their jobs. This massive loss in jobs caused the myGov website to crash and lines out of Centrelink offices to run hundreds of metres long. The program was backdated to 1 March, to aim at reemploying the many people who had just lost their jobs in the weeks before. Businesses would receive the JobKeeper subsidy for 6 months.
The announcement of the JobKeeper wage subsidy program is the largest measure announced by the Australian Government in response to the economic impact of the COVID-19 Outbreak. In the first hour of the scheme, over 8,000 businesses registered to receive the payments. The JobKeeper wage subsidy program is one of the largest economic packages ever implemented in the history of Australia.
Tensions with China In November 2019, the Australian news network Nine Network aired a report on alleged efforts by China to infiltrate the Parliament of Australia by recruiting car dealer Bo "Nick" Zhao to run in a constituency during an election, in what was called the 2019 Australian Parliament infiltration plot. Zhao was later found dead in a Melbourne hotel room with the cause undetermined. Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the incident was "deeply disturbing and troubling" and that "Australia is not naive to the threats that it faces" before cautioning "anyone leaping to any conclusions about these matters". Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang rejected the alleged plot and said that some Australian politicians, institutions and media outlets "reached a state of hysteria and extreme nervousness".
According to The New York Times, many countries including Australia saw worsening relations with China during the COVID-19 pandemic.Guangyi Pan, and Alexander Korolev, "The struggle for certainty: Ontological security, the rise of nationalism, and Australia-China tensions after COVID-19." Journal of Chinese political science 26.1 (2021): 115-138. online In June 2020, China's foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying criticised Prime Minister Morrison after responding to a European Union report alleging that Beijing was disseminating disinformation about the pandemic. The Australian government's call for an independent investigation into the causes of the pandemic provoked angry responses from China, with Beijing calling it "a joke". Western commentators, including those at The Washington Post identified China's subsequent targeting of Australian trade, particularly beef, barley, lobsters and coal, as being "defacto economic sanctions."
On 17 November 2020, China's embassy released a list of Chinese grievances against Australia. The list includes such issues as government funding for "anti-China" research at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, raids on Chinese journalists and academic visa cancellations, "spearheading a crusade" in multilateral forums on China's affairs in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Xinjiang, and calling for an independent investigation into the origins of COVID-19. A Chinese embassy official stated in a briefing with a reporter, "China is angry. If you make China the enemy, China will be the enemy." The official said that if Australia backed away from the policies on the list, it would be "conducive to a better atmosphere". The statement was seen as an open threat towards Australia.
On 16 September 2021, Australia announced a complex plan to purchase American nuclear submarines, in cooperation with Great Britain. It is a key element of the new "AUKUS" political-military alignment. Although China was not specifically mentioned in the news announcements, critics interpreted it as a major blow to Australian-Chinese relationship, by firmly allying Australia with the United States in military terms in the region. For the first time the United States and Britain will share their top-secret technology for nuclear submarines, which have a far wider range and lethal value than diesel submarines. By making the deal, Canberra broke with Paris, canceling a deal to purchase less expensive, less effective French diesel submarines. No nuclear weapons are involved, and the submarines will carry conventional weapons only.Sam Roggeveen, "Australia Is Making a Risky Bet on the U.S." The New York Times Sept. 20, 2021
Indigenous relations
The Morrison government's second term commenced with the historic appointment of Ken Wyatt as Minister for Indigenous Australians in the Second Morrison Ministry. Wyatt became the first Aboriginal person to sit in Cabinet and hold the indigenous affairs portfolio.Ken Wyatt: Australia's first indigenous cabinet minister; bcc.com; 28 May 2019
The Indigenous voice to government was a body first proposed by the Australian Government in October 2019 in order to create a channel for the voices and ideas of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to be heard in Australia. The process by which the channel will be established is known as the Indigenous voice co-design process. Arising from a request in the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart to have "a First Nations Voice enshrined in the Constitution", referred to as an Indigenous voice to Parliament, the Voice to government announced in October 2019 does not include this aspect, although a referendum on the subject has been promised. The Senior Advisory Group (SAG), composed of prominent Aboriginal Australians, was the first body set up.
In November 2019, the First People's Assembly (FPA) was elected, consisting of 21 members representing Aboriginal Victorians, elected from five different regions in the state, and 10 members to represent each of the state's formally recognised traditional owner corporations, excluding the Yorta Yorta Nation Aboriginal Corporation, who declined to participate in the election process. The main aim of the Assembly is to work out the rules by which individual treaties will be negotiated between the Victoria State Government and individual Aboriginal peoples.