CORONAVIRUS — INTERSTATE AND INTERNATIONAL
TRAVEL RESTRICTIONS —SPENCER FAMILY
726. Mrs L.M. HARVEY to the Premier:
Before I ask my question, as someone who has a family of
nurses, I would like to say a grateful thankyou to the nurses who have returned
home from Melbourne. I particularly thank them for their selfless service to
fellow Australians who have been impacted by the COVID crisis.
My question is to the Premier. Will the Premier agree to meet
with Peter Spencer, the father of war veteran Stephen Spencer who is trapped
overseas and is just trying to get home to Western Australia to be with his
family?
Mr M. McGOWAN
replied:
As I have said a number of times, we have a great deal of
sympathy for people who are overseas and would like to come home. At this point
in time, the advice is that around 25 000 Australians have applied to return to
Australia. The best way we can support everyone in this situation is to
increase, in a safe way, the number of people who are able to come back to Western
Australia. That is exactly what we have done. A further 500 Western Australians
will be able to return home each week. That arrangement will kick in over the
course of the next few weeks. We are currently negotiating with the
commonwealth about getting additional Australian Defence Force personnel to
assist us in maintaining and managing our hotel quarantine.
I want to make this point: I know that there are a lot of
these cases, but our main priority is to make sure that people can come home in a safe way and that we can also
keep Western Australians safe. Returning Australians are managed in our hotels. For whatever reason, the
commonwealth does not want to use the commonwealth facilities that it has
available. Therefore, the state is now managing nine hotels. This is a 24-hour-a-day
process, with security staff, health staff, police and the like assisting in
managing those hotels 24 hours a day, seven days a week in a secure way while providing a whole range of testing and
additional services—food, drinks, medical attention, psychological
support and everything else. It is a massive logistical exercise. If a mistake
is made, as it appears mistakes were made in Melbourne, and the virus gets out
into the community, that will obviously have dire consequences for the state.
We are doing our best to manage a difficult situation in the interests of
everyone, including people who want to come home from overseas.