Mark McGowan loses shine amid talk of lockdown overreaction

Rock star premier Mark McGowan has undeniably lost some of his appeal as questions emerge whether the five-day lockdown in Western Australia was necessary.

WA premier Mark McGowan was getting a coffee from his local cafe last Sunday ahead of a planned campaign event at Henderson, south of Perth, when word reached him that a man had tested positive for COVID-19 — the state’s first case of community transmission in almost 10 months.

At a hastily convened meeting of the state’s emergency management committee a short time later at Dumas House in West Perth, Mr McGowan and the most senior members of the state’s bureaucracy were informed of an ominous scenario: a quarantine hotel security guard was suspected of contracting the highly transmissible UK strain of the virus and had been wandering the streets of Perth for days while contagious.

As the government moved to impose a snap five-day lockdown of Perth and WA’s South West, stakeholders briefed by the government were left with the impression that a spate of new cases was all but inevitable.

Five days later, however, not a single new case has emerged. As of 6pm Friday, Perth was freed from its lockdown — albeit with some ongoing restrictions for the next week.

The infection has not turned into the public health crisis that was feared, but it has done some damage to the record of Mr McGowan, his government and the state’s health authorities.

The emergence of the pandemic last year helped transform Mark McGowan into Australia’s rock star premier, with his strong leadership during the early months of the crisis and his border trigger finger winning him almost universal support in WA.

But the past week has exposed several failings in the state’s quarantine system, some of which should have been rectified well ­before now, feeding a perception that WA may have been lucky, not smart, through the crisis.

WA was the last state to introduce daily saliva testing of hotel quarantine staff and was not carrying out those tests at the time the guard was infected, an oversight that allowed him to move around Perth for days before he tested positive.

It also emerged the guard in question had not been required to wear a mask while he sat in the quarantine hotel hallways.

And it also highlighted the ­government’s ambivalence over whether guards should be able to work second jobs. The guard moonlighted as a rideshare driver, although he did not work any shifts between his infection and its detection.

Daily saliva testing is now in place and guards are required to wear masks at all times, although the government is yet to finalise terms of a deal that would prevent guards from working second jobs.

The at-times muddled response of the past week has also shaken faith in the COVID planning of both the government and the state’s health authorities.

Families were shocked to discover that only one parent could leave the house with one child at a time to exercise. The government, to its credit, ended up changing that policy.

And major retailers who were allowed to remain open during WA’s last COVID crisis again opened their doors on Monday, only to learn from a press conference later that day that they were in fact supposed to be closed.

The fact that WA’s South West region is exempt from the ongoing restrictions that will apply to the Perth and Peel regions looks a tacit admission that the region should never have been in the lockdown in the first place.

A year ago, when inconsistencies or contradictions in the coronavirus responses of governments were identified, leaders had the excuse that there was no “road map” for their situation.

But, as pointed out throughout the week by WA Opposition Leader Zak Kirkup, WA has had more time than anywhere to study the successes and failures of other jurisdictions. It had 10 COVID-free months to plan for this exact scenario, which always appeared to be the most likely way for the virus to find its way back into the community.

While the detection of no new cases since that Sunday morning panic is welcome, it has raised questions about whether the lockdown was an overreaction.

In his late-night press conference on Thursday, Mr McGowan said it was a question he himself had grappled with.

“I’ve laid awake at night worrying about that. Was it an overreaction? I don’t think so,” he said.

But rock star premier Mark McGowan has undeniably lost some of his shine.