West Australian Premier Mark McGowan won widespread praise for his deft early handling of the COVID-19 crisis, but as the risk of the virus has eased he has devolved to a populist slanging match with the eastern states.
Not surprisingly for a state that voted in favour of secession in 1933, and where the secessionist streak has bubbled away ever since, his strong stance on borders and his inflammatory rhetoric has proved wildly popular among his citizens.
Despite being born in NSW and educated in Queensland, McGowan has embraced the us-versus-them mentality of Western Australians as enthusiastically as anyone in the west.
“I understand the eastern states better than many here and I understand how little they know about us and how little they care,” McGowan told The Weekend Australian earlier this month.
“The eastern states do not appreciate us and in fact many resent what we do for them.”
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His stance taps into the inferiority complex that is part of every West Australian. The push from the eastern states and the Federal government for borders to reopen is just another example on the endless list of those eastern staters running roughshod over the west yet again: this is the the West Coast Eagles playing a home semi-final at the MCG in 1996, Ian Healy being picked instead of local wicketkeeping maestro Tim Zoehrer, the rapacious pillaging of WA’s GST revenues by ungrateful rust belt states.
WA, the powerhouse of the Australian economy, has long felt unappreciated and ignored by the east while doing all the heavy lifting for the country. We in the west are prepared to get our hands dirty while Sydney sits around polishing its Opera House and Melbourne keeps pretending that trams are an efficient mode of public transport.
NSW’s calls for us to lift our border restrictions are particularly galling, given its role in helping coronavirus get a foothold in Australia in the first place. We are not going to take health advice from the state that gave us such large, disease-ridden vessels such as the Ruby Princess and Kyle Sandilands.
But WA’s resistance to opening the borders is not just parochial; it’s also pragmatic.
WA is less reliant on tourism than other states, so has less to lose on that front, and life is quickly returning to normal as the virus is all but eradicated.
Why risk having a bunch of filthy spreaders from the east traipsing up and down our magnificent beaches when we can just get on with the job of supplying the world its food and energy and every kind of rock it can dream of?
The state’s schools have been up and running for weeks, and our bars and restaurants can host twice the capacity of other states. While NSW and Victoria continue to battle sporadic outbreaks of the virus, we are on a path to be back to normal far faster than originally expected. Why jeopardise that to appease other states that never cared about us anyway?
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