WA’s COVID review must not forget victims of hard border

Mark McGowan has announced the three panellists who will conduct a review of Western Australia’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, but he is already very certain he wouldn’t have changed a thing.

“That remains my position,” he said on Thursday.

“I go to other places around the world, and I’ve been to some around Australia, and their experiences were awful. Absolutely terrible.”

WA Premier Mark McGowan’s tough stance on the border issue locked many people out.Credit:

Some people’s experiences in Western Australia were pretty terrible too.

Some pretty basic human rights – and humanity – were cast aside in the pursuit of keeping the virus out.

Alain and Gillian D’Argent were parents of 31-year-old Robyn, who’d moved to Sydney in 2020 to pursue her career in the beauty industry.

Lonely, and with clinical diagnoses of PTSD and depression, by late 2021 she wasn’t coping with life and wanted to return home to her parents.

She made two applications under WA’s pandemic-era G2G pass system – the WA Police Force-designed and run system that tightly controlled who could enter the state.

Robyn D’Argent died by suicide on December 1 after being denied entry back in to WA twice to see her family.

Both of her applications were refused.

Father Alain tried to call the bureaucracy – twice – to plead for some sort of review.

“There was no compassion at all. I tried to phone them twice when my daughter applied,” he told 9News on Thursday.

“They wouldn’t listen to me. They turned around and said, ‘No she’s old enough. We’re not going to discuss this with you’.”

On December 1, 2021, Robyn – twice vaccinated – took her own life.

Worse was still to come.

The D’Argents travelled to Sydney to get Robyn’s affairs in order and make arrangements for her body.

Once those grim tasks were done, WA would not let them return home.

Alain attached Robyn’s death certificate to his G2G application. It mattered naught.

Alain D’Argent with late daughter Robyn.

In desperation, Alain went to the media.

“We only got back in when [Perth radio] 6PR got on board. Channel Nine came in … then within 20 minutes it was sorted.”

This was not in the early, scary days of 2020.

This was December 2021, when vaccines had been widely available for months and the clinical severity of COVID well understood.

The D’Argents were double-vaccinated, testing was widely available. The media-generated intervention still landed them in a hotel room, grieving and isolated, at their own expense for 14 days.

Welcoming the establishment of the review panel yesterday, Perth intensive care specialist Luke Torre – a critic of the Premier’s January 2022 decision to delay WA’s reopening for a month – said it needed to take a broad view.

“We’ve done a lot of things right here, we have to give the government a lot of credit – and the people of Western Australia a lot of credit – for the way they responded to what the government asked of them,” he told Oliver Peterson on 6PR.

“But what we have to understand is this has had an effect on every one of our lives. So just the single number of ‘how many people died’ … has to be weighed up against the total health effects; physical, mental health, the economics of our state, and our social interaction.

“It’s about proportionate response and getting the balance right, not just deaths.”

Former Commonwealth deputy chief health officer Nick Coatsworth said despite their wild popularity with the majority of West Australians, an “honest view” of border closures should be on the reviewers’ table.

“If you’re going to impose those sort of restrictions on the liberty of Australians to travel in our own country, then you have to be able to resource the exemption process,” he said.

“It was poorly resourced and the bar was too high. You had people whose kids were on the verge of, or did commit suicide.”

It is an important point already picked up in other Australian reviews of pandemic management.

Victoria’s ombudsman Deborah Glass found as far back as December 2021 that that state’s “narrow exercise of discretion” resulted in “unjust outcomes”, which she called on the Andrews government to publicly acknowledge.

“While we did not review all decisions and I do not suggest that all were unfair, the overwhelming majority of applications did not get to a decision-maker at all,” she found.

“The result was some of the most questionable decisions I have seen in my over seven years as ombudsman.”

Alain D’Argent wants to tell his story to the review panel, which comprises former Liberal police and health minister John Day, veteran educator and arts administrator Margaret Seares, and former ACCC deputy commissioner Michael Schaper.

“It’s cost a lot of lives. I’m still there. I’m prepared to bring it up and talk about it. Because if no one talks about it, nothing is going to get done,” he said.

It is not at all clear that he will be allowed to do so.

“Consultation with public sector agencies and other stakeholders, including peak industry and community organisations, will be a critical part of the review process,” the government press release announcing the review said yesterday.

But it seems there is no provision for submissions from members of the public.

With all due respect to the esteemed reviewers, they should insist upon it.

The independence and credibility of the process depends upon it.