Australia leader refuses to attack political foes over virus

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australia’s prime minister on Friday rejected demands from within his own conservative party to publicly attack the center-left Victoria state government over its flawed handling of the nation’s worst coronavirus outbreak and an economically damaging lockdown.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has been widely applauded for attempting to rise above party politics in the national response to the pandemic. State governments ruled by the conservative Liberal Party as well as those governed by the center-left Labor Party are sending nurses and other medical resources to Victoria, the only state struggling to curb a second wave of infections.

But Victoria’s decision to throw 250,000 people out of work in Australia’s second-most populous city, Melbourne, with the country’s toughest lockdown threatens to fracture the fragile political truce.

Morrison said while his Liberal-led coalition tried to influence Victoria’s Labor government in confidential meetings on its pandemic responses, “states have compIete and total control over those types of restrictions.”

“I don’t see a great advantage of engaging in that process in some sort of public spectacle,” Morrison said. “I don’t think that would be good for public confidence. I don’t think that would be good for public assurance.”

Compared to the United States, Australia has largely succeeded in keeping partisan politics out of the nation’s pandemic response.

Morrison has formed what is called a National Cabinet to seek the cooperation of Liberal and Labor state and territory leaders in pandemic decision making.

David Kemp, a former Liberal government minister who remains influential in the party, wrote in The Australian Financial Review newspaper on Thursday that the National Cabinet’s unity is a pretense that is...