Really? Things seemed to have changed.

Apparently only of this morning, if we are to believe anything McGowan says. What a sad night for our federation.

According to late night media reports here.. things changed about 4pm yesterday when the latest numbers of deaths came out from the Eastern States. An a Emergency Meeting was called.. and plans started to change.

Exactly why the covid death definition needs to be redefined

I hate to tell you this … they can police that. My next door neighbour’s son and family got permission to come and see her on compassionate grounds ( my neighbour is 90) from Queensland. They arrived a week ago. They have been allowed to quarantine with my neighbour, with her, in her home. The Police arrive at random times, twice a day, every day, to check they are all home. So yes, they can police it.

Yeah move those goalposts

They did it with the definition of 'close contact'...

He indicated more will be coming in under compassionate exemptions. More police needed to check on them. When in isolation those in the same household will have to isolate too. Like that's going to happen. Increased arrivals = increased chances of spread. The hotel quarantine system was leaky enough.

So it seems like he wants more chances of community breakouts whilst also appearing to be tough, so he doesn't have to take responsibility for allowing large numbers of cases in. He doesn't want to have put his name to a date to avoid any backlash, so just let them seep in.

If Airlines had any guts they'd announce a snap end to all flights into WA, so none of those compassionate arrivals can actually get in anyway. Just keep one per day for essential freight only, no passengers.
They could also announce a grounding of FIFO flights, using the excuse of crews being distracted. Now THAT would force a change in minutes.

If Morrison had any guts (he doesn't) he'd just stop all those extra booster shots coming into the state, saying if WA won't follow the national plan they can fund their own vaccines. But when you have a failed marketing manager as PM who only knows spin you never get substance or action.

Cracking waste of police resources, grilling every person arriving into WA and going house to house checking on isolations. Meanwhile, assaults are up 14% on 5yr average and domestic violence up 19%.

https://www.police.wa.gov.au/crime/crimestatistics#/

Sure did, in line with the US and UK, backed by big business and not by the scientific community. The states agreed to the new definition too, so it's not an argument of bipartisanship. Why we would follow suit with those countries is beyond me.

Airports are now empty, supermarket shelves are empty, casual workers throughout the country are on LWOP and now we have the trucking industry and Scomo asking for child forkies. What a timeline.

Why even have the one freight flight per day? If McGowan and his supporters want to remain cut off from the rest of Australia (while constantly sneering at what’s happening in other states), then they can remain cut off. Properly.

They pretty much already have. Jetstar has pulled out for the moment, probably won’t return for a few months. VA and QF only have one flight a day over to the East Coast.

Nailed it Dre.
What a spineless twerp he is.

Does anybody really care? Who's going to WA anytime soon? I think it is time for people to move on from WA and whatever it is they want to do. So long as the FEDS are still getting the taxes they are owed out of the joint, all good.

Yep. Dre is on the money. It’s exactly what he’s doing.

In the mean time, what a stunning waste of police resources to keep tabs on all those evil G2G holders, while crime everywhere else here runs rampant.

And still no published plan to fix the hospital mess. Two years of absolute Covid free luxury to get us ready and he completely wasted it. What an utter disgrace.

Hate to rain on your parade but here in SA word on the street is the majority of the population wishes SA would do the same though probably too late now. Since the borders were opened the city is deserted, traders are complaining about no customers and/or staff as too many are off due to being a close contact. Flights are being cancelled and shops closed because of the above. Consensus now is it is worse than when we had borders closed and brief lock downs to control it. Phrase often used is that this has back fired on the State and Federal government and big business that pushed the "let it rip " scenario in the first place. Just saying.

Same in Tasmania which has an economy built on tourism. Locals are furious.

A big problem in SA - I've back and forward many times in the last few years - is that the 'locals' were lulled by the low infection numbers into going lax on the mitigation strategies. If I had a buck for each time I saw someone with his or her nose hanging out of the top of a mask, failure by a business to insist on check in and no social distancing during my most recent visit, I'd be very rich. A complete change from the previous visit.

The East coast has just about reached the end of the beginning of the practical long-term response to the pandemic. SA will catch up in the next couple of months. Standby for many more deaths.

The sovereign nation of WA? Who knows. I suppose it will depend on if and when the money runs out.

The problem is not the virus, it’s the ridiculous arbitrary isolation requirements. I caught it, was sick enough to have one day off work. But no, I had to take a week off, as did my wife. What should have been a single day loss of productivity became 10, multiple this by 100,000 people per day and it’s no wonder the country is coming apart at the seams.

All for a deadly killer virus that was subdued by a couple of Panadol.

McGowan has crab-walked away from a decision that has been set in stone for months. Hundreds of thousands of individuals and tens of thousands of businesses have planned around this hard date.
He has done this because either;
- He knows the virus is in the community and cannot be stopped. So he doesn't want to be blamed for this due to open borders (The Dre theorem), or
- He is deluded into thinking he can control it and will shortly return the good burghers of WA (who have done everything asked of them and more) back into lockdown, as open borders would have precluded this.

Either option is cynical, politically expedient and a disgrace.
There is white-hot seething anger amongst the many folks I engage with in WA.

You cannot hold a compact of the sort he did, imploring all that was needed was to meet a vaccination rate threshold, and then renege without consequence.
His electoral goose is cooked I suspect and hope.

The remainder of the country has lanced the boil, as unpleasant as that is in the short term.
WA must lance it too, eventually. The can cannot be kicked down the road forever.