Western Australia versus the rest: ‘we know best’ on coronavirus border closures

WA’s NSW-born, Queensland-educated premier has delivered a scathing lecture to the rest of the country.

Shaniece Kemp and Isaac Lake take a stroll along Perth’s Cottesloe Beach on Friday, enjoying freedoms foreign to Melburnians at the moment. Picture: Colin Murty

The state with a secessionist streak has a NSW-born, Queensland-educated premier who says the rest of Australia simply does not understand the west.

“I just hope that out of this, there is a greater appreciation of what Western Australia does to carry everyone else,” says Mark McGowan, the former navy lawyer who drove his Toyota Corolla across the Nullarbor to Perth in 1991, and stayed.

As the political glare turned on WA on Friday over its rogue stance on the issue of border ­closures, Mr McGowan countered with a lecture that could have been titled: Why the West is Best.

WA’s hard border was not only protecting the state’s residents, it was helping to safeguard the economic engine room of the nation that dug up almost $100bn of iron ore last year, he told us. WA, which was reluctant to join the Federation in 1901 and voted 32 years later to secede, was home to just 10 per cent of the nation’s residents yet produced half the nation’s exports, he reminded us.

WA, unlike the rest of Australia, was not in recession. The state was buzzing, he reported.

WA had not recorded any coronavirus cases in the community for 146 days and, in turn, had been able to reopen large sections of its economy. We’re going just fine, he said.

Not for turning … Premier Mark McGowan at a news conference in Perth on Friday. Picture: Jackson Flindell

On Cottesloe beach in Perth’s west on Friday, Isaac Lake, 28, and his partner Shaniece Kemp, 23, arrived for ice cream and a stroll. — a world away from locked-down Melbourne.

“I like to leave it to a lot smarter people than myself to look after the West Australian economy but I reckon McGowan has done well,” the fire spotter pilot says.

Mr McGowan is not for turning. The border will remain shut, at least for the rest of the year. He said it made economic sense, but with a state election just six months away, his stance makes political sense as well, given the domestic approval of his position.

“If we brought our border down, adopted some alternative regime that was less effective — which it would be — and the virus came in via some fly-in-fly-out worker out of Melbourne, infected a major mining company and then huge numbers of the mines had to close as has happened in Brazil it would be catastrophic for the rest of the country and for Western Australia,” he said.

“They rely on us. You know, where do they think their money comes from? Where do they think, in some places, all the money comes from for services and hospitals and schools and police forces and public servants? It comes out of Western Australia so for them to demand that we bring down our borders and then potentially impact major income generating industries in the state is not in their interests.”

Many West Australians can tell you to a cent just how low the state’s share of its GST revenues fell (it bottomed out at 30 cents in the dollar in 2015-16, before Mr McGowan negotiated a path to a floor of 76c in the dollar).

The AFL’s decision this week to ignore football-mad WA and its gleaming, $1bn, 60,000-seat stadium and award the grand final to Queensland’s creaking Gabba has only reinforced the innate perception among West Australians that they are taken for granted by the rest of the country.

As well as an approval rating of 91 per cent among voters, Mr McGowan has support from some of WA’s most recognisable names for keeping the borders closed. Businesswoman and philanthropist Janet Holmes a Court said he had done “a brilliant job”.

“I am very sorry for businesses that are doing it tough or that have gone to the wall but the lives of West Australians are foremost in his mind,” Mrs Holmes a Court said.

“I sound like a truly parochial West Australian saying this but I don’t think many people understand the role that WA plays in the economy of Australia”.

Mrs Holmes a Court is not a secessionist, but she agrees events of the past few months have stoked those instincts in a lot of people.

Former Australian cricket captain Kim Hughes, who lives on Perth’s northern beaches, knows he is fortunate.

“McGowan has got 91 per cent support, we are the safest place in the world, so why would you open the border? “ he said.

Most West Australians cannot travel overseas and international visitors are not welcome but domestic tourism is booming. In holiday spots such as Exmouth on the edge of the Ningaloo Reef, the numbers of visitors this winter was three times the average. In the tiny town of Shark Bay, grey nomads and campers have been locust-like. The shire cleared away 1000kg of fish guts from filleting stations at the July school holidays, prompting the council to ask the state government to halve the allowable catch.

Former Wallabies player John Welborn, the Perth-based managing director of gold producer Resolute Mining which has mines in Ghana and Mali, said it was difficult to run an international business under the current border restrictions. “It would be great if those restrictions could be lifted,” he said. “But I think the WA and Australian governments are being relatively sensible in supporting businesses that make applications for exemptions.”

Wesfarmers director Diane Smith-Gander believes it is important that WA’s border does not reopen until Mr McGowan says it is time. “You need to have leadership and it needs to be firm, so I’m very supportive of the way the premier has approached the situation,” she said.