You took the words out of my mouth re political parties of the locked states. Left / right don’t enter into it. It’s bleeding state populism.
As for green shoots of recovery... I queried ML TWR at 0800L this week about any preceding aircraft getting visual in the low cloud as we started the ILS. “We haven’t had an arrival for over and hour” was the reply. A weekday morning on what was one of the busiest air routes in the world.
Around the country, Perth is the busiest yes - but with intrastate stuff.