A telling incident in Western democracies about borders

The electoral power of strong borders is vastly underestimated.

Western Australia has hard borders at the moment, and no coronavirus — other than a few cases getting caught in the mandatory quarantine. That’s 2.5 million people who are almost living a normal life.  This is not to boast (we wish you could be here), but to point out how politically popular closed borders are in the current pandemic. The Premier is wildly popular, polling close to 90%. To all the people who said “states can’t close borders” the message is that it’s bonkers not to close borders. When the Commonwealth government joined the bizarre High Court push to force them open, the pushback was ferocious. A poll today showed that West Australians are fed up. The West Australian collected 245,000 signatories to a petition supporting the border closure.

Not only do 96% say the borders should stay shut, but when asked, a whopping 34% of Western Australians said the state should secede. How fast did it come to that?

Never, have I seen such vitriol towards the Commonwealth from WA. …the Commonwealth’s decision to effectively join hands with Palmer in the Federal and High courts risked making Morrison and the Federal Liberals public enemy No.1 here in WA. It beggars belief that the Morrison Government would ever let it get to this point, that the Federal Government would ever be part of any legal action to force WA to open its borders.

– Joe Spagnolo, Columnist, The West Australian (Paywalled)

Presumably that anger will be lower now that the Commonwealth has pulled out of one of the most stupid cases they were ever involved in.

WAxit: Exclusive new survey results show one in three West Australians wish to secede from the nation

The West Australian

Exclusive polling conducted by The West Australian showed 34 per cent of the 837 people surveyed this week support the move for WA to become a separate nation.

Close to three quarters of West Australians said that since the COVID-19 pandemic the Federal Government has put the needs of the eastern states ahead of West Australians. More than 35 per cent of those canvassed by Painted Dog Research strongly agreed with the statement that Canberra is too focused on the needs of the eastern states which has been to the detriment of WA.

Only last week Scott Morrison was saying he was sure WA would lose in the High Court and he had some mealy mouth words about doing it to protect us. But faced with a Liberal Party wipe out coming in WA elections, and the growing debacle of “open borders” on the East Coast, where infections are spreading, he finally backed down. The question is, what was he thinking in the first place?

 

Read the rest here