WA Premier’s threat to ‘go it alone’ slapped down

NSW Health Minister takes aim at Mark McGowan over path back to normality, as Barnaby Joyce warns unvaccinated could soon be in for a rude awakening.

West Australian Premier Mark McGowan has suggested the state could go its own way on the path back to normality. Picture: Colin Murty

NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard has criticised the West Australian Premier Mark McGowan for suggesting the state could go its own way on the path back to normality.

Mr Hazzard said the states and territories needed to work together, after Mr McGowan said the state would reserve its rights to enact lockdowns even after 80 per cent of the population is vaccinated.

“I did hear one premier basically saying, ‘Well, we’ll run our own race’. It can’t be that way,” Mr Hazzard told the ABC’s Insiders program.

“Every state and every territory must get to those targets in order for that to be an effective outcome from the National Cabinet, and to keep us all safe.”

Mr Hazzard said there was a “flood of AstraZeneca” but the vaccine had been undermined by mixed messaging from the Morrison government and the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation.

NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Bianca De Marchi

“We want more, a lot more Pfizer. And we aren’t getting that. But we understand there’s AstraZeneca. Everybody understands there’s a flood of AstraZeneca,” Mr Hazzard said.

“But the mixed messaging that’s come out of ATAGI and the federal government has not been helpful. It has definitely not been helpful. But having said that, I think the community are waking up that the one thing we can all do ...is have the vaccinations.”

Earlier, Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce predicted private companies would begin refusing service to people who are not vaccinated from Covid-19.

The Deputy Prime Minister said business owners would likely not want to be responsible for unvaccinated people falling sick from the virus.

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce says: “I have got a right as the owner of the shop to say I can’t have you sitting in a seat next to someone who has.” Picture: Photo: Glenn Hunt / The Australian

“People in private enterprise are going to say ‘look I’ve got rights here too’,” Mr Joyce told Sky News.

“If you want to come into my barber shop, or my childcare facility …then I have a right to say, maybe, have you been inoculated’?

“And if you say you haven’t, I have got a right as the owner of the shop to say I can’t have you sitting in a seat next to someone who has.”

It comes amid protest across Europe over vaccine passports and laws that would ban entry to cafes and public transport for the unvaccinated.

In France overnight, more than 204,000 protesters — many decrying what they called a “health dictatorship” and carrying banners and French flags reading “Freedom!” — marched in cities across France, including Marseille and Lyon, according to estimates from France’s interior ministry.