‘He’s paying for it’: Clive Palmer blasts Mark McGowan’s hotel quarantine debacle

Billionaire businessman Clive Palmer has again attacked Mark McGowan’s handling of the pandemic, saying the WA Premier failed to learn lessons from other States’ issues with hotel quarantine for returned travellers.

Mr Palmer, who failed in a High Court challenge last year to reopen WA’s borders, told the Australian Financial Review that Mr McGowan had focused his Government’s efforts on keeping coronavirus out of WA in the wrong areas.

“And he’s paying for it,” he said. “There are 836 people dead in Victoria because they didn’t get their quarantine right. They [WA] didn’t learn from that?

“You know people going into hotels are high risk for COVID. You know they are because they are coming from overseas. Therefore the security should be the strongest.”

The Perth, Peel and South West regions entered a five-day lockdown at 6pm on Sunday after it was revealed a security guard working at quarantine hotel had contracted the highly contagious US strain of COVID-19.

The man, known as case 903, had also visited various shopping centres and businesses in the Maylands areas in the days before he was tested for COVID-19, forcing the State Government into a lockdown and widespread testing of potential contacts to curb any outbreak.

“You can’t close up a State every time you get one case because you are locking down millions of people, destroying businesses, stopping children having their education,” Mr Palmer told the AFR.

“NSW and other States have been able to manage it successful.”

WA Health Minister Roger Cook told The West Australian that WA would not automatically return to a five-day lockdown if another case of coronavirus community spread occurred.

But the State needs to record two weeks of zero cases during the current restrictions situation to return to “pre-lockdown normal”.

And while some measures will ease if we get to Friday with no more positive tests, it does not mean we will not be wearing masks next week.