State governments loomed larger not just in the political consciousness of the citizenry but in the respective economies of each state, owning various businesses and employing vast workforces in infrastructure provision.

Together, these forces made Australia often feel akin to something resembling a collection of nation-states inside a nation. This was especially evident when the state leaders would gather in Canberra each year at premiers' conferences to wrangle money and concessions out of the incumbent prime minister. The premiers would be accompanied by their local state political reporters, who would detail to readers how their premier was defiantly looking after his people.

As Australia moved to a more national outlook in the early 1990s, these conferences made way for COAG, the Council of Australian Governments, which gradually became an ineffectual yawnfest. COAG was a victim of the pandemic two months ago, making way for the more flexible and loosely formed national cabinet.

As the national cabinet has gathered plaudits for the level of co-operation and unity between first ministers and the Prime Minister in the fight against the novel coronavirus, something else has been going on outside.

What we’ve seen in the past few weeks is a lively revival of the old federalism, complete with state rivalries and barely suppressed enmities. State borders, barely acknowledged for years, are now steel curtains requiring the help of the military to ensure they are effective.

The second wave of infections in Victoria has rendered all Victorians either unclean or suspect outside the state. Scott Morrison has regularly asserted since Victoria’s infection numbers started spiralling upwards that we are all Australians combating a common enemy. He deserves a tick for at least trying to use his credentials as the nation’s leader, especially since resisting the cheap shot runs counter to the instincts of almost all modern-day politicians.

Unity ticket

Having secured his miracle election win, Morrison has contemplated his own political mortality and understands that just one mistake can turn a winner into a loser. So, observing that “there but for the grace of God go I”, he has placed himself on a unity ticket with Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews, at least for now.

But few state leaders, driven by the need to keep their own people safe and also some self-interested opportunism, extend much sympathy to Andrews or his state. Many Victorians will bridle at that, especially since they’ve seen their state grow so quickly since the previous recession that it was on track to soon overtake NSW as the premier state.

However, it shouldn’t surprise that premiers and chief ministers might want to throw their weight around a bit. One lesson of the pandemic is that although the states have lost some of their pre-eminence through the decades, they still retain significant powers over the everyday lives of their people, as the lockdown orders and border controls have demonstrated.

Slowly, it’s dawning on policymakers and the public that even if there is some sort of fix or inhibitor of COVID-19 either through advanced treatments or a vaccine, what we are experiencing now is likely to run for at least a couple of years.

To some degree, most of us get what that might mean in terms of how we will have to restrict the way we go about living. But there could well be wider implications.

If we have to close or severely limit our external borders for years, digital communications notwithstanding, it seems we'll likely become more inwardly focused. That would be quite a reversal.

One of the really big changes to come with the opening up of Australia from the 1970s onward was our greater physical connection to the outside world through cheap global travel, which reduced our sense of isolation, which had been a key feature of the national mindset since colonial times.

It’s too early to say yet just how long Australia and its favoured destinations will remain closed to each other, but it will affect our way of looking at the rest of the world if it continues well into this decade. It could seriously harm the ability of some of the most talented Australians from making their mark on the wider world – again a feature of the smaller, less ambitious Australia in which I grew up.

It’s fully understandable that the states that have avoided a second wave want to keep Victorians at bay. After all, this is a matter of survival. But if it’s a revival of the narrower view of people and of life and its possibilities that characterised the old Australia, that’s a tragedy for coming generations.

Shaun Carney is a regular columnist.