Australia is a collection of six different states and two territories each of which has entirely separate governments.
The Australian constitution gives the federal government authority only over a very limited range of areas. Anything outside those areas is completely under state or territory control. The federal government cannot stop the states or territories doing anything like in those areas.
One of those areas is ‘public health’.
Now, we have two state governments - Western Australia (which is what this article is about) and Victoria (where I live) which have been batcrap crazy and totalitarian about COVID. Both of those states have hardcore socialist governments.
Western Australia is now the most extreme (it’s overtaken Victoria over the last couple of months, as the Victorian government finally became a little bit more reasonable than it had been.)
That is what we are seeing here - the most insanely paranoid of Australia’s state leaders spouting off his nonsense in his state that he has completely cut off from the rest of the country. He is the only one spouting this type of crap about the pandemic going on for years. Everywhere else in the country is now working on the assumption it’s almost over. He’s the one nutty exception.
He doesn’t speak for all of Australia. He doesn’t even come close.
This covid tyranny by the state governments must be absolutely killing the tourist industry.