Mark McGowan has kept Western Australians safe. Mark McGowan agreed with the national plan. It does provide for safeguards in that national plan. And I find it quite extraordinary that the prime minister has basically described Western Australians and Queenslanders as somehow being cave people wanting to stay in the cave.
The reason why there are restrictions is because of the prime minister’s failure to secure enough vaccines, including for Western Australians and Queenslanders, and a failure to build purpose-built quarantine.
Premier Palaszczuk proposed the Wellcamp site last October, 10 months ago. We could have had purpose-built quarantine operating for the whole of this year in Queensland at that site. In Western Australia, there were proposals, for example, at Exmouth.
I know that the Western Australian minister, Minister MacTiernan, has spoken to me about the need for quarantine facilities for ag workers and for others. The fact is that the reason why there are restrictions today is because the prime minister failed on those two fundamental jobs – quarantine and vaccines.
