Busybody WA Premier again inserts himself into Sydney’s lockdown demanding NSW submit to his hardline approach and apply western suburbs restrictions citywide and force mask wearing outside
- Sydney’s lockdown likely to be extended after case numbers have not dropped
- WA Premier Mark McGowan said his NSW counterpart should have acted faster
- The NSW Premier stuck to soft-lockdown restrictions until mid-July
- Mr McGowan wants it to be much stricter and masks worn outside everywhere
Mark McGowan has again demanded Sydney follow his hardline approach and tighten its lockdown to suffocating levels.
The Western Australian Premier continued his campaign to make Sydneysiders even more miserable with another swipe at Gladys Berejiklian.
Mr McGowan insisted the NSW premier admit her ‘mistakes’ and expand the tough restrictions on western Sydney across the city and expand mask rules.
Sydney’s Covid outbreak grew by 145 on Monday despite 31 days of lockdown so far and no signs the daily new cases will slow down.
‘Well obviously the NSW government has made some terrible mistakes,’ he told reporters during a tour of a mine site on Monday.
He said locking down specific local councils was pointless as people just moved between them anyway and spread the virus.
‘We just want them to put in place measures that work and actually take this more seriously. They’ve got to lockdown properly,’ he said.
‘They can’t have borders between local government areas within Sydney people cross borders… they close one LGA and then they move to another and they close that… it’s not working.’
Mr McGowan said Sydneysiders should be forced to wear masks all the time outside, as was the case in Melbourne, even with no one around.
‘They don’t have a mask mandate outside, people are wandering around the streets without masks on,’ he said.
Sydneysiders only have to wear masks in close proximity to others outside, such as at bus stops and waiting for coffee orders and can otherwise be unmasked.
Not a single case of Covid has been transmitted outdoors in Australia in the whole pandemic and there is no evidence it occurs, according to NSW Health.
The WA premier, a strong advocate of hard and fast lockdowns even with a few cases, praised Victoria and South Australia over their quick lockdowns.
He also backed Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews’ call that there should be a ‘ring of steel’ around Sydney to ‘protect the rest of Australia’.
‘They don’t have restrictions on people leaving Sydney, they don’t have any of the roadblocks that every other state government has put in place,’ he said.
Mark McGowan (pictured) said his NSW counterpart should have followed his lead and imposed harsher restrictions
Sydney’s lockdown (pictured) are likely to be extended after case number have failed to drop
Ms Berejiklian was previously praised for keeping NSW open during Covid outbreaks but the Delta strain that emerged in June proved too much for this strategy.
In late June, she resisted growing calls for an economically-damaging Melbourne-style lockdown as the outbreak first broke out of the Bondi region.
She stuck to a soft lockdown which included travel out of Sydney being banned and masks required in public indoor spaces including workplaces.
‘It is a very contagious variant, but we are at this stage comfortable that the settings that are in place are the appropriate settings – but that is so long as everybody does the right thing.’
The state government is considering what restrictions are to remain in place after July 31 with case numbers not appearing to drop.