Australia can afford to wait and see as it is less dependant on international travellers than countries such as Thailand.
Tourism is (was) Australia's fourth largest export accounting for just over 8% of all export earnings before everything went south. It even overtook coal for a while there. This may become apparent at the end of March. The theory that we can 'afford to wait' is undone every time we shut down a whole state for a single case. People who haven't had their lives inconvenienced by more than a mask and working from home, which is most, would probably agree with you though. I guess that's the
PR problem the rest of us have.