WA had two years to get homeless people off the street. So why are they still stranded as Covid surges?

‘Western Australia abandoned highly vulnerable people on the frontline of a global pandemic and they are still stranded today.’ File photo of Fremantle’s tent city in 2021. Photograph: Richard Wainwright/AAP

On a Sunday afternoon two years ago, a week after the pubs closed across Australia, I was at the office where I worked with homeless people in the Perth CBD.

Scott Morrison had just given a national cabinet address “strongly advising” Aboriginal people over 50 with health conditions to stay home and isolate, part of an edict banning public gatherings of more than two people to be introduced in the coming days.