Sydney: Western Australia (WA) Premier Mark McGowan on Monday said he does not plan to reopen the state’s borders until 2022, amid ongoing Covid-19 outbreaks in the country’s east. McGowan said he wants vaccination rates between 80 and 90 per cent before setting a date to allow people from New South Wales (NSW), Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), which are dealing with outbreaks, to travel to the state.
“We have opened at various points of time along this road and I expect we will open again once we get to very high levels of vaccination. I expect that will be some time next year,” the WA premier said, Deutsche press agency (dpa) reported. “Imagine if it was the other way around and Western Australia was the infected place with thousands of cases and NSW had none, or Victoria has none – would they really want to open to us?
“I think the answer would be no.”
McGowan and Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk have been vocal in their criticism of a national plan which would see restrictions starting to ease once vaccination targets of 70 and 80 percent of those eligible are met. Their NSW counterpart, Gladys Berejiklian, has stood by the roadmap, despite her state being the worst affected by the current outbreaks. Berejiklian has also said she intends to reopen international travel to her state when the targets are met, regardless of what other states do. Inter-state borders in Australia have been shut at short notice multiple times during the pandemic, while the country’s international borders have been closed to all but residents and citizens, with a few exceptions, since March 2020.
