Mark McGowan getting arrogant

Be careful Mark the only is down from here if you get carried away with yourself.

1h agoOctober 1, 2020HIGHLIGHT
Premier's savage dig at 'poorer' states

Natalie Brown
The date Western Australia's border could reopen to the rest of Australia remains a mystery, with Premier Mark McGowan telling reporters earlier today there was "no benefit" in changing the restriction.

The state's borders are shut to anyone except for designated works on those granted exemptions on compassionate grounds – and have been that way since the coronavirus pandemic struck Australia six months ago.

Mr McGowan said a travel bubble with South Australia and the Northern Territory – where community transmission has been stamped out, and cases (if any) remain low – wasn't worth pursuing, despite the strategy being adopted by SA, the NT and Queensland.

"There is no benefit," he said.


Picture: Jackson Flindell/The West Australian

"All we'll do is lose jobs were we to open to those (jurisdictions).

"The other states want us to open the border so that West Australian tourists will flood east, not so that people from the east will come here.

"They're only saying all this for very self-interested reasons because we have higher incomes, we have people that are more used to travelling and therefore we'll have more tourists go from Western Australia to the east."

Mr McGowan has insisted the border will only come down when all other jurisdictions go 28 days without any community transmission – a stance that's been deemed "beyond caution" by some of the nation's top epidemiologists.


Picture: NCA NewsWire/Joel Carrett

"When we get calls from other governments around Australia, particularly NSW, to bring down our border, all I'd say is they have had significant policy failures in the east that caused the spread of the virus into Western Australia in the early days," he said, referring to reports that passengers from the Ruby Princess cruise ship could have infected as many as 11 people on a flight from Sydney to Perth.

"We're always very careful about our borders to protect our people. If only they'd been more careful, we wouldn't have had some of those cases come to our state."