“We did the right thing to save the lives, particularly of older people and particularly of immunocompromised people,” McGowan was reported in WA media to have said, insisting he was “proud of that decision”.
“There will be people alive who wouldn’t otherwise be alive because of the decision the Government of Western Australia took… the South Australian, Tasmanian governments, other governments around Australia, took a different decision and there’s a large number of people who are now dead in those states.
“That’s my point of view – I actually value human life, I value it.”
Asked about McGowan’s comments on the campaign trail today, Marshall initially said he hadn’t heard them, but that he “completely rejects any comment we haven’t prioritised lives”.
“We’ve had an extraordinarily good performance in SA,” he argued, noting that WA “hasn’t opened the borders yet” but Omicron had regardless infiltrated the state, which today recorded 643 new cases.
“You cannot keep Omicron out, there’s no way you can do it,” Marshall said.
“It was our decision that we should be doing that [facing the Omicron surge] before the flu season… we haven’t had a flxjmtzywu season in Australia for three years [so] that’s a dangerous time to have very high numbers of Omicron.”
Marshall said “we know we needed to make sure we needed to get this wave through before we get into the dangerous flu season [so] that’s the decision we took and it was the right decision.”
SA has recorded 169 deaths linked to COVID, with all but four of them coming since the November border reopening.
