When Mark McGowan stood up on Thursday evening to announce that Western Australia would continue to be sealed off from a Covid-infected outside world, the reaction was swift. But it was by no means one-way traffic.
Opinions on the dramatic backflip – cancelling the state’s planned 5 February reopening – were split down familiar faultlines, with business advocates and the Tourism Council crying out in financial pain while health workers breathed a sigh of relief.
The backdrop to WA’s U-turn was a record 88 deaths in one day across the nation. The New South Wales chief health officer, Kerry Chant, warned that fatalities there were likely to remain high for some time.
If WA had lifted its restrictions and quarantine arrangements on 5 February as planned, modelling suggested the highly infectious Omicron Covid variant could tear through the state and peak at as high as 60,000 cases a day – 10 times the Delta forecasts, according to the Australian Medical Association WA president, Mark Duncan-Smith.
Surging Covid numbers were a daunting prospect for frontline workers complaining that WA’s “underfunded” health system was already in crisis, even without widespread Covid infections.
Duncan-Smith wanted better preparations and restrictions, rather than postponing border reopening and possibly moving the peak into winter.
Postponing the border reopening is an admission that the health system has failed, the WA opposition leader and Nationals MP, Mia Davies, says.
“They have squandered the luxury of time to prepare our state for Omicron and Covid arriving,” Davies said. “He has left us with more questions than answers.”
But McGowan says WA hospitals are as ready as they can be after the state pumped $3.2bn into beds, doctors and nurses during the past 12 months
With no Covid patients currently in WA hospitals, McGowan wants 80-90% of Western Australians to be triple vaccinated – instead of the previously mandated double dose – before lifting the hard border.
He says advice from his chief health officer is that this will increase Omicron protection from 4% to 64% in a state with the some of the most remote locations, across one of the largest landmass jurisdictions, in the world.
WA currently has some of the lowest Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander vaccination rates, with 61% aged 16 and over partially vaccinated and just 43% double vaccinated.
“I know I’m getting a lot of criticism. What we’re trying to do is save lives and save jobs at the same time,” McGowan said.
“A lot of people say we should be living with Covid. Well, there are 752 people in the eastern states no longer living with Covid,” he said, referring to the number of Australian Covid deaths so far in 2022. “You should ask their families whether we should deliberately infect large numbers of West Australians.”
But for many of WA’s 2.7 million residents – who for nearly two years followed the rules and got vaccinated because they were told it was a path to freedom – McGowan’s broken promise is a hard pill to swallow.
Some say they were sold a lie, while others are struck overseas or interstate, unable to afford the time and cost of the sudden change to 5 February quarantine rules.
“I met a deaf 17-year-old today who flew into Canberra for a few weeks expecting to be able to return to school when the borders open,” HR manager Christine Leahy says.
“She is now stuck here in Canberra with no family and no way to get home in time for the school year.”
Forty-year-old bricklayer Coilin Devlin says his plans to fly out to see his very ill sister in Northern Ireland have been destroyed because he hasn’t enough holiday leave to quarantine.
“Without any warning he has pulled the rug from under my feet,” Devlin says. “I don’t know when I’ll see my family now and it’s been years.”
The border closures have earned WA the nickname of the “hermit kingdom”, but McGowan argues people have had the opportunity to enter.
“I know there has been a lot of commentary over the course of the last couple of days, perhaps, that we have been locked out or people have been locked up for two years. That is not actually true,” he said.
The Tourism Council CEO, Evan Hall, says businesses that rely on international and interstate guests are already struggling to survive, and are now facing financial ruin.
“Tourism businesses are reeling from the impacts of the indefinite border announcement and are receiving mass cancellations of events, tours and holiday bookings. They are facing a financial crisis,” Hall says.
“We are looking at a genuine major compensation package for any tourism business that trusted in the planned opening dates.”
But Duncan-Smith says the decision is not black and white. “Only government can make this decision because they are the only ones with all the information,” he says.
“You have to factor in vaccination rates and effectiveness, availability, delivery of vaccines, school and health preparedness, and rapid antigen test availability.
“It’s incredibly complex and the number of people with Omicron in WA is doubling every three days,” Duncan-Smith Says.
He urged the government to set a reopening date. “I think that having an open-ended delay from a psychological point of view is not going to be good for society.”
There are currently 82 active Covid cases in WA, with 24 in hotel quarantine.
On Friday McGowan ruled that masks must be worn at all Australia Day public events to tackle a growing Covid cluster of four cases with unknown origins.
The WA nursing union state secretary, Mark Olson, has labelled the border backflip a lifesaving move, saying there is a lack of hospital beds.
“I know he is going to cop a lot of flak for it, but it’s the right decision at this time,” Olson says.
“We can have a debate about whether the health system is broken. The government will say that it is fine; we will say there are some major structural issues that have arisen after four years of underfunding. I think we can both agree that the health system is not up to dealing with Omicron.”
• This article was amended on 23 January 2022 because an earlier version cited the number of active Covid cases in WA as 1,348. The correct figure is 82.
