West Australian Premier Mark McGowan has fired back at Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce after he likened the state to North Korea over its COVID-19 hard border.
Mr Joyce told the Sunrise program that WA’s border reopening on March 3 – after the initial date of February 5 was scrapped due to Omicron surging in the eastern states – had left the airline “struggling” to get organised.
“I don’t know what the extra month has given us in Perth,” he said on Monday.
“We were planned, ready and organised to open up on February 5 and now we are struggling to meet March 3 because we have people on leave that we asked to take leave and it’s a very disorderly opening,
“We will put the capacity on but it could have been done a lot better than this and it’s disappointing.
“Finally, our country’s reunited. We are no longer North Korea and South Korea. We have one country again.”
But Mr McGowan was quick to bat away the criticism.
“I don’t really get it,” he told reporters on Monday.
“(WA has) the most successful economy in the world, the greatest freedoms of anywhere in Australia for the last two years (and) virtually no one getting sick or passing away.
“Comparing us to North Korea, I think, might be a bit over the top.
“A repressive dictatorship that murders hundreds of thousands of people compared with a successful democracy, full of freedoms and the best economy in the world. I think that’s an unfair comparison.”
Qantas Airways has seen a significant rise in international ticket searches and bookings since Australia said it would reopen its borders.
Mr McGowan said while he knew Mr Joyce, he had not spoken to him recently.
But the Premier said he was used to copping criticism no matter what he did.
“It just comes with the job. People are always going to attack you and criticise,” he said.
On the day WA introduced a raft of new restrictions – including home gatherings limited to 30 people and the 2sq m rule for many venues – the state recorded 224 new Covid-19 cases overnight, including 213 local infections.
About 5800 people had a PCR test on Sunday, while the number of people in hospital with Covid-19 remains at two – neither of whom are in intensive care.
One of them is vaccinated but the other is not.
WA is also continuing to deal with an outbreak in the remote Aboriginal community of Jameson, some 1000km east of Kalgoorlie.
Two people have tested positive so far, and Mr McGowan revealed they had arrived illegally via “back roads” from South Australia.
“I understand they’ve been fined as a consequence,” he said.
Mr McGowan said there had been a big effort to vaccinate the community, so he was hopeful they would be relatively safe.
“The two people who were positive are in quarantine and police are monitoring the situation, and we have a testing regime in place,” he said.
“We expect there will be other people infected and we’ll do what we can to manage the situation in that community.”
About 50 people who make up the community have been placed into a lockdown as a protective measure, with several close contacts identified.
