Balancing a budget and a pandemic, Labor must reboot public expectations | Katharine Murphy

Most of the cabinet was overseas. Albanese and Penny Wong were in Suva, Jim Chalmers in Bali, Richard Marles and Tony Burke in the United States, Murray Watt in Indonesia.

When Butler arrived as health minister, the chief medical officer pointed out some of the restrictions imposed at the height of the emergency could be unlawful in the absence of the biosecurity declaration. The CMO advised the new minister to remove vaccination requirements for incoming passengers. Because some of the state emergency declarations are lifting too, some of the arrangements in relation to aged care facilities will automatically lift, and the commonwealth will have to step up given infection rates in aged care continue to climb.

Also baked in: an end to pandemic leave payments on 30 June, which is the issue which has exploded this week. Pandemic leave has blown up in the context of a significant winter outbreak, with 4,000 people currently in hospital and hundreds of people dying each week, including about 100 deaths a week in aged care facilities.

At the same time as issuing this warning, Butler was the public face of ending the provision of free rapid tests for concession card holders, and winding up pandemic leave. For a government that had just won an election telling voters no one would be held back and no one left behind, this felt like cognitive dissonance to put it mildly.

We are now in a period of transition, and there are important debates to be had about what level of government intervention should happen in the transit zone between pandemic and endemic. If the community becomes fatigued by endless rules, then public health strategies and the supports underpinning them become counterproductive.

But when we think about budget pressure, a clear irony emerges. The new government is trying to stabilise the budget not as an abstract talisman but to create room for its own priorities, which include delivering the social supports and services that voters expect Labor governments to deliver.

Stabilising the budget will require a substantial mindset shift in Australia. During the pandemic, the community has grown very accustomed to high levels of public expenditure. The answer to most questions since about March 2022 has been spend to save lives and livelihoods.

The premiers, who have come in peace during the opening two months of the new regime, over the course of Friday very obviously executed a pincer movement ahead of an emergency national cabinet meeting on Monday. By Friday night, the emergency Monday meeting had been yanked forward to Saturday, and Albanese was set to propose a temporary extension for workers who needed the support.

But things are always harder at home.