Victoria has recorded 26 days with no new coronavirus cases and NSW is also on track to reach the 28-day milestone. However, the WA Government has yet to confirm that quarantine requirements will be dropped, despite Chief Health Officer Andy Robertson recently stating that travellers from both states should no longer be subject to quarantine requirements if this threshold is reached.
From The Australian:
[Premier Mark] McGowan said his state would take other factors into account when weighing up whether to open up its border to the country’s two most populous states…
“The sorts of things you take account of are sewerage testing … border arrangements, people who might have come from other infected places, and their testing regime.
“We will be cautious and we will be careful and we won’t take risks. We will adopt those principles the whole way through”…
The muddied guidance on the border has meant further uncertainty for families eager to visit WA from Victoria and NSW, and has also been criticised by parts of the business community…
The McGowan Government loves the hard border, stating the following in this year’s State Budget speech:
The Budget Papers also assumed that WA’s border would remain closed until the June quarter of 2021:
Treasury has adopted the working assumption that interstate borders reopen from the June quarter 2021 and the international border reopens from the December quarter 2021.
With Victoria having zero active COVID-19 cases there is zero justification for keeping WA’s border closed. Nor is there any reasonable justification for remaining shut to NSW, which has only 12 active local cases.
The WA Government’s decisions are all about parochialism and politics now. It has nothing to do with public health.
