Strewth: WA Premier Mark McGowan gives Easter Bunny ‘eggs-emption’

The Easter bunny has been granted an eggs-emption to cross Australian borders on Sunday.

WA Premier Mark McGowan's "egg-semption" to the Easter Bunny.

West Australian Premier Mark McGowan has issued potentially the most important coronavirus announcement yet — an “eggs-emption” for the Easter bunny. He made the official decree in response to a letter from worried nine-year-old Thornlie resident Taylah. “Will the Easter bunny be able to come to Western Australia this year?” Taylah wrote. “I heard that Mr (Scott) Morrison has said no one can come into Australia because of COVID-19 and Easter Island is a foreign country.

WA Premier Mark McGowan's "egg-semption" to the Easter Bunny. Picture: Supplied

Please put this on the news when you have an answer, I really wish the Easter bunny can come because I really like Easter and Easter egg hunts.” McGowan made the egg-straordinary decision on Friday — in between telling quarantined cruise ship passengers to stop whingeing — signing a letter that gives a “Special Eggs-semption” for “the Easter bunny to travel freely into and throughout” WA “for the essential service of eggs’ delivery”. Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy confirmed the notorious EB is an “essential service” and would be allowed to continue operation on Sunday “because he or she” was a “solo operator”.

Wax on, wax off

WA closed its border at 12.01am on Monday (except for “approved exempt travellers”). “In effect we’ll be turning Western Australia into an island within an island — our own country,” McGowan said. But unlike the four years (and counting) Brexit, he joked, it’s taken his Labor government just four days to organise WAxit. Strewth is currently taking suggestions for what we could call this new country. Perhaps Westralia? This reminded us of the time Employment Minister Michaelia Cash was asked about a motion passed at her state’s Liberal conference in 2017 in favour of investigating the possibility of seceding from the commonwealth? Her tongue-in-cheek response? “WAxit, that’s quite a personal question. I don’t even know you!”

Skewer it

McGowan went viral at the weekend after he couldn’t contain his giggles about the east coast social-distancing kebab crackdown. NSW police allege a 21-year-old man ignored two warnings he was going to be fined $1000 before officers found him, for a third time that day, eating a kebab on a Newcastle bench. Cue McGowan: “I find it hard to believe someone was going for a run and then stopped to have a kebab. In any event, they do things very differently in NSW. Look, um. There's nothing wrong (laughs). There’s nothing wrong with going for a run (laughs). There’s nothing wrong with going for a run and having a kebab (laughs) but, but (laughs) I don't think there’s anything wrong with (laughs) we’re not making it unlawful to go for a run and eat a kebab (laughs). It’s whether or not you’re in a group, that is the issue.”

Crabby about cops

The ABC’s Annabel Crabb tweeted this “tall tail” from Sydney on Sunday: “Yesterday we took the dog to our local park for some state-approved exercise. Teenage daughter accompanied under sufferance; refused requests to take part in physical exercise (she’s her mother’s daughter) and settled down with a book while the rest of us kicked a ball around and tried to stop the dog from rolling around in the remains of a long-dead pigeon. Then the cops arrived and teenager GOT IN TROUBLE for reading and not exercising. I’m not mad for the police state but I cannot remember a sweeter parenting moment.”

Tie-riffic punt

With rugby league’s State of Origin showpiece looking uncertain this year, we’ve had to entertain ourselves with this across-the-border stoush. The NSW RFS tweeted: “Don’t forget to wind your clocks back this Saturday night.” Queensland Fire & Emergency replied: “Thanks for joining us.” NSW RFS zinged: “We’re only going back an hour. Not 30 years.” With no football, Sportsbet has opened betting on the weather and what colour tie ScoMo will don at his next nationally televised press conference. Blue is the favourite for Monday at $2.20, followed by silver/grey red on $2.75. Red is $4, yellow $7, gold $7.50, pink $13, purple $15, black $17. No tie or a bow tie is $21, as is brown, with orange a $26 outsider. The last time Sportsbet tried a tie punt, it backfired spectacularly. On election night 2016, the bookies offered odds on Laurie Oakes’s fashion choice, but the veteran political reporter ran sartorial sabotage and changed ties six times, forcing Sportsbet to pay out all bets to the sum of some $3000.

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