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Parliamentary Questions


Question Without Notice No. 636 asked in the Legislative Assembly on 9 September 2020 by Mr V.A. Catania

Parliament: 40 Session: 1

CORONAVIRUS — REGIONAL BUSINESSES AND TOURISM — INCREASE

636. Mr V.A. CATANIA to the Premier:

I refer to the significant population increase and pressure placed on essential services and volunteers in tourism communities, such as Exmouth, Coral Bay and Shark Bay, which have seen their usual population increase tenfold for a sustained period. Does the Premier acknowledge that there is now an urgent need for additional police, health and emergency service staff —

Mrs M.H. Roberts interjected.

The SPEAKER: Minister for Police, I call you to order for the first time.

Mr V.A. CATANIA: — and volunteers in these communities —

Mrs M.H. Roberts interjected.

The SPEAKER: Minister for Police, I call you to order for the second time.

Mr V.A. CATANIA: Does the Premier acknowledge that there is now an urgent need for additional police, health and emergency services staff and volunteers —

Mrs M.H. Roberts interjected.

The SPEAKER: Minister for Police, I call you to order for the third time.

Mr V.A. CATANIA: — in these communities to help them cope with a greatly increased population; and what is the state government doing to help these communities?

Mr M. McGOWAN replied:

We have done a great deal for the tourism communities of the north, including Exmouth, Broome, Kununurra and Karratha—which I personally think is a great town to visit—Newman, Tom Price, Hedland, Geraldton, Carnarvon and Denham. They are all wonderful communities to visit. We have ensured that the tourism industry is vibrant. That is the main thing that we have done. We have got economic activity back in these communities. There was a period for a number of months, of course, when we had border arrangements within Western Australia to try to prevent the spread of COVID, which had a small prevalence in the community back then, and that arrangement was successful. We brought down those borders and launched the Wander out Yonder campaign and we have had huge success in getting tourists into these communities across Western Australia. The reports I have had from Geraldton, Exmouth and Broome are that there has been a massive number of Western Australians holidaying in Western Australia. I regard that as a success and I think the communities themselves would be saying, ''This is a good outcome from what could have been a catastrophic situation.'' If we have a look at other places around the world, we see that the tourism industry has died. In Western Australia, certainly in the regions, overwhelmingly, it has been successful.

On the additional resourcing of police officers, as I have said on numerous occasions, as the last Premier and every Premier going back to Sir John Forrest has said, the deployment of police is a matter for the Commissioner of Police. He deploys them on the basis of the assessed need on any given day or month. We have deployed additional resources up to the Kimberley to deal with the borders and the matters surrounding the remote communities. That was a matter that the police commissioner, of course, put in place, and I think that has worked well. I heard the Minister for Police interjecting. She said that there have been no reports of significant additional crime across the north of the state. Again, I say that rather than bemoaning the success of our tourism strategy, I think we should be out there singing the success of Western Australia's marvellous tourism industry.