Originally Posted by
KRviator
And the Territory Government seems to have been the most pragmatic in their dealings with Covid,
I haven’t really seen it that way, the NT government at times has closed borders sooner to outbreak states than WA. The “hotspot approach usually only lasts a day or so before the hotspot is declared to be the whole city or state, so in practice no real effect. They definitely operate on a Covid Zero policy with hard lockdowns over one community case. They have similar worries to WA (big resource industry and vulnerable indigenous population). NT Chief Minister Michael Gunner recently said he’d probably need higher vaccine rates than indicated by the Doherty modelling before he stops using lockdowns due to the amount of vulnerable indigenous in the NT.
At the moment NT’s restrictions are identical to WA, with the exception of Qld, and Qld should move to restriction free with WA within a week.
I would say WA, NT, SA, Tasmania and Queensland essentially are all talking off the same page at the moment.
Which is why I wonder why QF would issue that statement considering a change to DRW with a “conservative WA border policy” if the NT is being just as strict on its borders, and really no indication from the NT government how they’ll transition from Covid Zero. Just like how no one has questioned how SA, Tasmania or Queensland will transition from Covid Zero, didn’t stop multiple international routes out of Brisbane being announced this week. Didn’t stop Perth-Singapore route being announced with no suggestion of a re-route despite the same issues with a Perth-London route existing.
So personally I think it may be a bluff to get more leverage in negotiations about extra routes from Perth from the existing T3/4 and more leverage in negotiations about the eventual move to T1/2. This happened in 16/17 before the London route was announced with indications it wouldn’t go ahead unless the State government came to the table with funding for more terminal facilities.