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Parliamentary Questions


Question Without Notice No. 746 asked in the Legislative Assembly on 24 September 2020 by Mr Z.R.F. Kirkup

Parliament: 40 Session: 1

CORONAVIRUS — INTERSTATE BORDER RESTRICTIONS

746. Mr Z.R.F. KIRKUP to the Premier:

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker.

Mr F.M. Logan: Here he is—Che Guevara!

Mr Z.R.F. KIRKUP: That might be one of the more kinder things that have been said in here about me, but nonetheless!

The SPEAKER: Minister for Emergency Services, I call you to order for the first time. Just remember, we are in Parliament and we have young children up the back listening to some of this behaviour. I hope it stops pretty soon.

Mr Z.R.F. KIRKUP: Not soon enough, Mr Speaker.

Is the Premier's position that if there is no community spread in the eastern states for 28 days, he will look to have the border removed, and is that still his position?

Mr M. McGOWAN replied:

That is the advice provided by the Chief Health Officer. For some reason, and I do not understand the strategy, the state opposition and the Liberal Party keep trying to undermine the efforts that we have gone to to keep Western Australia safe. They keep trying to undermine that. They do not seem to have a strategy committee. They do not seem to think about the questions that they ask. We scratch our heads every day about their strategy. No wonder Joe Spagnolo—that very wise and sage political commentator—said that it is the worst opposition he has seen in 15 years! I have seen some pretty bad oppositions over that period. That is what Joe had to say. I do not understand its strategy and why it wants to undermine all that has been achieved in Western Australia.

We have had no community cases now for 163 days. The biggest threat to the state is the virus coming in from overseas or interstate. If the virus comes into the state, as we have seen in other countries around the world or other states, the health impacts will be bad and the economic impacts will be dire. Therefore, the model we have established in Western Australia, which is a very open economy—the most open economy within the country; a modern trading economy internationally, but we have a border in place to keep ourselves safe—has worked. It has saved the lives of countless older Western Australians and people who are immunocompromised across the state. It has worked. There are threats to it. We know that Clive Palmer went to the High Court and we are still battling him in the High Court. He does numerous things to undermine Western Australia. His efforts were supported by the Liberal Party—an undeniable fact. Why did the Liberal Party do it? Probably because its fervent hope is that he will spend millions of dollars in the state election campaign to try to bring the state government down. He has already spent hundreds of thousands, if not millions, on a campaign against me personally and the government. The Liberal Party fervently hopes it will secure support from Clive Palmer and, therefore, the Liberal Party will be right in his pocket the whole way along. The way the Liberal Party acts in this state is disgusting and disgraceful.