Liberals would be better off keeping Morrison out of WA. Whilst people (myself included) don't agree with McGowan's backflip I put ultimate blame on our fracturing as a nation on the guy that's meant to be in charge of the whole thing. Where has Morrison been over this decision? I haven't heard a peep from him and if he has opened his mouth no one is really listening as his credibility is now shot.

Whilst state governments have been doing their own thing the last two years and a lot have excused the PM's lack of action on an inability to control them, a good federal government with strong and effective leadership and good forward planning could've pulled the nation in one direction. As Howard did over the 1996 gun laws. McGowan's failure of leadership is only second to Morrison. That's what happens when the failed marketer sacked by John Howard who got pre selection and then party leader through some dubious actions or being the last man standing. You get all spin no substance, and I think many have seen through him for a while now.

Small problem of a High Court case that gifted Mc Gowan all his power.

Morrison should have grabbed the bulls by the horns from day 1 that might have worked as Mc Gowan didn't want locked borders until he realised it was popular. However even doing that was a grey area in terms of who was responsible for what.

There is only one reason for Morrison's absence in the current debate: the looming Federal election. He knows darned well that McGowan still enjoys a huge amount of support. If Morrison pushes too hard the LNP will lose more votes in several marginal seats that could make or break the next election. He saw the backlash that occurred in WA when the Commonwealth Government supported Palmer's High Court challenge. The Commonwealth subsequently withdrew and since then Morrison has largely kept quiet about WA and McGowan.

Very well said.

I guess maybe an easy answer to Sco Mo absence is accountability, secretly he most likely likes that the premiers are controlling the health orders. Imagine each way Albo now if Sco Mo was responsible he would be saying the Libs are responsible for every death and every other problem associated with this mess.

This is what I am hearing from friends in SA and QLD. They wish their premiers had waited a bit longer too.
The worry isn't so much having to deal with the virus as 14 days of house arrest for a triple vaxxed negative testing healthy individual who has been unlucky enough to become a "close contact".
The current iso requirements would have meant we would be without healthcare workers and all industries grinding to a halt within a week or two of throwing open the borders. No jobkeeper, cashflow boost etc this time.
McGowan's last "lockdown grant" was only given to a very very small selection of businesses affected - he lost a massive amount of support when that promise turned out to be an email to the vast majority saying "You are not eligable for this grant".
If you are going to let it rip then why bother with iso?
Sure McGowan has lost a lot of support, but from what I hear the majority of people are very relieved he hasn't just gone from hard border to no border overnight.

If SCOMO wins the election, I think the feds will up the pressure somehow on McGowan and the border wouldn’t remain closed much longer after the election win (if he wins)

May 14 or 21 will be the most likely dates for the next election. However it looks as if WA will be open well before then. If the current low rate of spread around the city doesn't exponentially grow to the point where the border becomes redundant, then there is a narrow window for reopening laid out in the following article below:

COVID WA: Why Mark McGowan may have to open border sooner

“This [booster coverage] is expected to have a significant impact on [Omicron] modelling up to the end of March,” he said.

In his written advice to push back the February 5 reopening date, Chief Health Officer Andy Robertson gave the clearest indication yet WA would reconnect with the world in the autumn.

He said the added protection of booster shots would start to wane from the end of March, particularly among the elderly and healthcare workers who were the first to get a third dose.

He told the Premier that any decision on a new opening date should consider the potential for “twin outbreaks” if the COVID peak or post-peak period was expected to fall in the winter flu season.

WA Health had planned for the peak to be about two months after February 5, with hospital occupancy typically best in February, March and April.

The PCR testing regime was expected to collapse under the demand caused by the fast-spreading variant, meaning rapid antigen tests would be crucial. By February 27, just over 25 million were expected to be available and a further 37.75 million by late March.

So basically elderly and healthcare workers have been boosted over the last month. The peak of booster protection starts to wane from late March. Meaning you would want maximum protection around this time. You also don't want too much occupancy in winter, with a dual viral spread happening simultaneously. More RATs will be available then too. So if you open at the start of March the peak should be late March when the protection is highest. Then through April the cases reduce and a few weeks later hospitalisations too, so by the start of winter Covid won't be as much of an issue and then ready for influenza and RSV.

Now if that reopening was delayed as you suggested til after the mid May election the wave would be right through winter, with much less effectiveness of boosters in the elderly and simultaneous Covid and Flu outbreaks. That would be a bit of a disaster in the health system and obviously bad PR so even McGowan would want to avoid this.

My bet would be a early to mid March reopening date. Although he may have gotten some kudos for delaying the date what I think has screwed him is the lack of an alternative. Even the previously cautious AMA has urged him to quickly set a new date.

He doesn’t act on health advice, he hides behind it. I remember watching the debate between Zak and Mark pre-election and when asked by a reporter “will you open the border after the vaccine rollout?” his answer was “if the health advice says so”. That’s when I knew it’s not his intention to open until covid magically ceases to exist. His backflip just proves that.

But in SA and QLD how much of that public concern comes from a failure of leadership?

QLD has played politics with the border throughout the pandemic (QLD hospitals for Queenslanders). She’s also played on the “southerner” sentiment. So it’s a natural reaction for people to be apprehensive when “those people” are allowed back in.

SA has a clear bias towards extremely cautious rules. “Don’t touch the ball at the AFL” comes to mind! Lockdown over the pizza shop anyone?

Tasmania has similar problems with onerous rules but no one cares about Tasmania so it doesn’t get mentioned.

What I mean by failure of leadership is our various Premiers mostly failing to lead from the front and guide people towards opening and rising cases. They needed to make a rational argument why we should open AND then drop the obsession with case numbers and isolation rules.

The fact case numbers are still widely reported shows we are focusing on the wrong thing. The isolation rules also show we aren’t focusing on the right thing. The whole idea of a close contact shouldn’t even exist anymore. The only rules should be for people with actual symptoms, stay home. Everyone else should be allowed to continue to work until they actually get sick.

Because at the end of the day, the risk of serious illness or death does NOT exist anymore. The statistics for death/ICU are getting close to influenza. Which is to be expected after we did what we were told and got vaccinated. Plus Omicron is a milder version than Delta.

Getting close to what we had with influenza, and despite those numbers of deaths, there was not even a whisper of upcoming masks lockdowns or border closures. It would have taken a lot more influenza deaths before any of those measures would have been introduced. What’s the difference now? The word ‘covid’ splashed on all media headlines, combined with the number of stoopid people in Australia and we have the resultant fear.

Here's the advice given to McGowan by the WA Chief Health Officer. Most of it has been ignored by the media.

CONTROLLED BORDER TRANSITION ARRANGEMENTS

Seems that link doesn't exist anymore. LOL

My apologies. The link still worked earlier this afternoon, but has since been taken down. It was published yesterday afternoon as part of an article by WA Today:

Benefits of COVID-19 booster shots in WA would start to wane after March: Chief Health Officer

Edit: They changed the link. The advice can now be viewed here:

CONTROLLED BORDER TRANSITION ARRANGEMENTS

Very nice health advice to print such nice formal letters lol, pity the WA health system is still a cesspit of disgrace! With all due respect I lived in Perth 25 years ago and the health system was absolute disaster back then, just shows you can’t fix stupid. And Stupid tends to be at a high level in remote cities. The Feds should move to remove them from Australia and invade and destroy them one day later, best outcome for all.😂

So given all this, if they don’t announce a “firm” date to open around late February/March then when?

If there’s no community transmission then either (assuming they get the current cases under control), it’ll be an easy excuse to hold off longer.

So if not March, then they delay again significantly to avoid the winter surge of other illnesses.

So I see it as either March or January/February 2023.

Who knows? One of the CHO's recommendations was "develop a recommended case number threshold for opening the international and interstate borders, if outbreaks occur prior to the planned opening date". If the current outbreak keeps growing, then McGowan's hand might be forced.

Oh? You mean during the government of Richard Court? (1993 - 2001) and John Howard (1996 until he became the only Australian Prime Minister to lose his seat while in office)

If SCOMO had any balls, he would drop the arrival caps into WA. As far as I’m aware, this falls under federal jurisdiction, but the current 250 arrivals per week was made on request by the WA state government. McGowan would then have no choice but to home quarantine all the arrivals. At least get Australian’s home. But no, SCOMO needs to look after the needs of his party’s re-election before the needs of Australians stranded abroad.

Which as I believe Dr Dre said, might actually be the intention.

If it does get away from him and cases rise, he can argue that he “did everything to save WA residents” but the virus got through anyway due to (probably) “those pesky eastern states ruining our lives”.

He’ll get to save face vs opening up and. HIM being the reason the virus is there.

Dr Dre’s ‘bet’ of mid-to-late March was based on the CHO’s advice re booster efficacy, hospital bed availability, etc, which sounds reasonable. If McGowan doesn’t open then, he’ll need to wait until after the winter illness peak, but then we’re potentially back to needing further boosters to ensure maximum protection. So, mid-to-late March seems quite likely, but all bets are off if the current outbreak gets out of hand.

You can dream up other excuses for McGowan’s decision to delay the 5 Feb reopening, but the advice from the CHO clearly recommended such a decision.

I would say early to mid March. Australia wide cases peak in the Omicron wave 17 days after they took off, the UK about 3 weeks. In Queensland they peaked a month after borders open, about 2-3 weeks after spread really took off. From the UK and South Africa we can see Omicron waves last about 6-7 weeks, a rapid rise followed by a rapid decrease. Already beginning to see the start of a similar decrease in Australia. We can expect by mid Feb the East Coast wavs to have mostly subsided, meaning more RAT tests and health staff available for WA if they started their wave just after that.

March 2 was named in the CHO health advice document. March 5 is the next Saturday. I'd reckon those are the most likely candidates.

Push back domestic flying by a month, but the additional international services planned out of Perth shouldn't be effected, as they weren't scheduled to start til late March or April.

Israel found a 4th shot to be ineffective, and the European Medical Agency has said more than 3 shots can be harmful to the immune system. They recommended the boosters be timed to co-incide with prior to winter, so March-May in the Southern Hemisphere which is when we usually get flu shots. So you won't see the next round of mass vaccinations in Australia until March-May 2023.

I agree. The 'mid-to-late March' bit was an error on my part.

I did say 'potentially'. The Israeli study found the fourth dose was ineffective at preventing symptomatic infection with Omicron, despite a significant increase in antibodies. However, the study was very small and did not answer the question of protection against serious illness, particularly amongst those with compromised immune systems (https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel...d-as-it-seems/). The EMA's Marco Cavaleri said that "While use of additional boosters can be part of contingency plans, repeated vaccinations within short intervals would not represent a sustainable long-term strategy" because it hypothetically increases the risk of overloading people's immune systems (https://www.reuters.com/business/hea...es-2022-01-11/). The comment was related to the long-term use of successive boosters, not specifically to a second booster (ie fourth dose). The point being that much of this stuff is at the cutting edge of science and the jury is still out on many questions. As Cavaleri said, more data and research is needed to support decisions one way or the other. Clouding the issue further is the fact that current vaccines were not designed to target the Omicron variant and thus require the use of a booster to provide protection. The picture might well change again if Pfizer has an Omicron vaccine available in March, as has been claimed (https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/10/covi...-in-march.html), or if yet another variant emerges.

I think it's fair to say the next few weeks will be 'interesting', particularly if the current outbreak continues to grow, as I suspect it will.

https://amp.smh.com.au/politics/fede...23-p59qhy.html

Lets open up and get people flying. It’s all going to plan.

SOPS are you still flying for a living?

No. But I’m still have plenty of friends that are or wish they were.

And do you want those friends to return to flying? The position, tone and the garbage mainstream media links you post indicate otherwise.

And here we go agen, just because someone doesn't agree with you they are an antivaxxer, political activist, ra ra ra. I'm in SA, I supported opening the borders, I am triple vaxxed, our business is closing at the end of the month for lack of supply and staff. I deeply regret opening the borders, I will not be having a fourth jab because I conclude it doesn't work according to my expectations. If we need to close the borders again down the track for all the same reasons we will. McGowan is right to keep the borders closed for now and I don't give a **** what the rest of the aviation community think about that. Have a nice day.

Missing my point completely.Take his latest link for example - first of all it’s a “may be locked out” not an “is being locked out”, secondly not all EU (including Italy and Greece, possibly two of the biggest EU markets for Aussies) will adopt the proposal, thirdly as soon as cases drop, Australia will quickly be removed from the red list.

Now you don’t have to be Einstein to come up with these possibilities, but he doesn’t seem to want to highlight the positives. Just the negatives, as indicated by his line:

[/QUOTE] Lets open up and get people flying. It’s all going to plan.[QUOTE]

Whilst he is free to speak in whatever manner, he’s doing no one any favours, especially his out of work friends.

Regarding the above link, no evidence of critical analysis, just has to throw in a doom and gloom statement. To me this just sounds like depression or resentment for the industry he is no longer part of. I hope it’s not, for his sake

and here we go again, your position / stance is directly attributable to your personal circumstance / situation. Have a nice day

https://www.news.com.au/finance/econ...99a69e074a3202

Its not just aviation. It’s everywhere. ( of course it could be just be main stream media garbage.) In my opinion, the opening of the borders around Australia was a mistake.

Especially when I hear the Prime Minister best idea to keep supply chains going, was to let 16 year olds drive fork lifts.

And your poison/ stance isn’t, Jetstar?

It would actually be beneficial for me to have WA close it’s borders. But I don’t believe it’s the right thing to do.

Yes! along with the attitude of the rest of the state and damn NSW Govt/Health to hell for their cavalier we know better attitude, despite having been present in VIC and failed to learn the lessons and failures back then.
WA will be effected soon enough, opening the borders isn't going to change anything. you are not going back to normal, you won't be flying again anytime soon, borders or no borders, everything is coming to a grinding halt. Tourism and Travel is the very last think on anybody's mind if at all. This is going to take months to recover from and more likely a year and it only started 8 weeks ago.
P.S It's not so much our professional departments, it's the public service not what it used to be. They couldn't organise a root in a brothel.

Opening the borders gets loved ones re-united. That’s what I care about. Freedom of movement is restored. That’s what I care about, not having it blocked by a virus that has such an incredibly low fatality rate. As for the logistical nightmare cases are causing, change the isolation rules.

no-one would argue with that. but that's not what going to happen, everything stops, you still can't travel at least for very long and you are left with even bigger problems. We are used to make a call and it's delivered or nip down to the store and get it yourself, wait till it's, sorry mate I don't have any and don't know when I will. when that stops your own business/ activity, now what. Do what we are doing close up for a month re-access after that.

When will MM announce a lockdown to crush this virus? He has been quick to act previously. This only means one thing. MM knows the horse has bolted and he is in the war room coming up with a plan to open sooner than later now. I have noticed over the last few days in SY the airport has got busy again in the last week either it’s ppl just going home or the initial fear of omicron etc could be over and confidence is slowly on the up.

Definitely noticed this as well. I’m hoping the initial fear is subsiding as the general population gets used to living alongside the virus. The bed wetters are still pretty vocal on social media calling for more restrictions to keep them ‘safe’ though. It’s more likely people heading home after their holidays but one can only hope.

On the isolation requirements; one of our family member, who is a doctor, tested a ‘weak positive’. Had a “tickle in his throat” one morning and did a RAT as he works in ED. By next day, is completely asymptomatic and negative RAT. His wife is also an ED doctor. Both now have to isolate for 7 days despite both showing no symptoms and coming up negative on RAT. Both had boosters. We’ll need to treat this like any respiratory virus to get back to normal. Remember the days when you stayed home until you felt better? For some it was a few days, for others it was only one day and then back into it? That’s where this needs to be heading.

well said.

Hey SOPS, should PER go into lockdown or just let the current outbreak grow?

"Let it grow, let it grow
Can't hold it back anymore"

.......sorry. :bored: