WA border could be shut until April

The West Australian Premier has made it no secret that he would like to keep his state’s borders shut to the rest of Australia.

West Australia could have its borders shut to the rest of the country for another seven months as Premier Mark McGowan takes a swipe at stranded overseas Aussies.

The Premier who has regularly shut off his state to the rest of Australia has told The West Australian the border bans won’t stop until at least 80 per cent of locals are vaccinated.

“Somewhere above 80 per cent we’ll try and set the date. I don’t know whether it’ll be February, March or April, I suspect it will be one of those months,” he said.

Premier Mark McGowan. Picture: Jackson Flindell

Both Western Australia and Queensland have repeatedly slammed their borders shut throughout the pandemic. They are now lagging behind in vaccination rates with about 36 per cent of residents fully jabbed.

The Labor run states also demanded a cap on the number of international flights returning to Australia – despite NSW housing the majority of them.

Mr McGowan boasted that the travel ban had been good for his state.

“There’s an assumption of a big economic downside impact when international borders open because we lose a lot of spending power in retail, hospitality, housing — everything — to international travel,” he said.

“We‘ve got to, obviously, open eventually but it’s been a remarkable economic boom for Australia not having international borders open because for every international tourist that arrives, there’s way more than one Australian that goes overseas and we spend more.”

While other states’ economies have been struggling in lockdown, WA has been largely unaffected courtesy of the state‘s mining industry.