CORONAVIRUS —
INTERSTATE BORDER RESTRICTIONS
747. Mr Z.R.F. KIRKUP to the Premier:
Distracted by the Minister for
Emergency Services, it was remiss of me to not recognise Mrs Leighton and the
year 6 students from St Damien's Catholic Primary School, in the
Speaker's gallery this afternoon.
I
have a supplementary question. Why is the Premier so confused? Does he not know
his government's position is that the interstate border will not be removed until there has been no
community spread in the eastern states for 28 days?
Mr M.
McGOWAN replied:
The member has spent three and a half
years in opposition and he cannot even ask a question. I explained it to him:
we follow the advice of the Chief Health Officer. The current advice is: no
community spread for 28 days in the eastern states. I have explained that. I said
it at the start of my answer. What I find with supplementary questions by these
opposition members is that they do not actually listen to the answer. They come
forward and read whatever has been placed in
front of them as part of their supplementary question. The shadow Treasurer
mutters away, unable to ask his own questions. Does he support the
Castro-esque policies of the state Liberal Party these days? The state Liberal Party has gone so far out on the Stalinist
edge with its current 1950s Moscow policies. Seriously, Khrushchev would
have been proud of it! If he were here, he would be banging his shoe on the
table, saying what a great job the Liberal Party is doing in Western Australia.
That is what would be happening if Khrushchev were here. In fact, the shadow
Treasurer reminds me a little of Khrushchev!
The reality is that we are doing our
best to confront a pandemic that is causing havoc around the world. We are
seeing a second and third wave across Europe. We are seeing tens of thousands
of cases a day in the United States. Once
the caseload builds up, the hospitals get overwhelmed and then thousands of
people die. That is what happens. We are going to see thousands upon
thousands more deaths in Britain shortly. If it spreads through the entire
community, it will be in the tens of thousands, if not the hundreds of
thousands, and throughout the world, millions. What we have achieved in Western
Australia at this point, which is no community spread for 162 days, we should
hold dear. We should hold that close and we should seek to protect it. For some
reason the Liberal Party seems to think that the strategy should be to tear it
down. That seems to be the Liberal Party's attitude in this state. What
is actually wrong with the Liberal Party that that is what it wants to do? Why
not pick some other issues to ask questions
about and come in here and say to the state government, ''This has been
a good policy. You've worked to come up with a range of options
and models that work in Western Australia''? Why does the Liberal Party
not do that and pick some other issues to pursue, rather than continuing its
obsession with tearing down the border and, therefore, creating havoc within
our state?