It is interesting to consider Western Australia's approach to those who breach Covid restrictions. This week two Melbourne football fans were sentenced to three months in jail after they got into WA illegally on September 22 for the AFL Grand Final.
Restaurant owner Hayden Burbank, 49, and financial planner Mark Babbage, 39, were sentenced in the Perth Magistrates Court on Wednesday after admitting to using fake driver's licences and vehicle registrations with their applications to enter WA, in order to appear to be Northern Territory residents.
Victoria was in the grips of an out-of-control Delta outbreak and WA had halted all travel connected to the state.
The pair readily provided all details of their movements after being arrested by police.
In New Zealand, we have Northland in hard lockdown because two women similarly blagged their way through border restrictions but, after finally being tracked down, are "providing very little information" about where they had been.
Epidemiologist Michael Baker says having the locations of interest is our only "chance to get ahead" of the virus. "We can't afford to have uncooperative cases." He is right, the cost to the country's health and economy is unaffordable.
Flouters have been brought before New Zealand courts. A mother who led her children's escape from an isolation facility in Hamilton to attend their father's tangi was jailed for 14 days. For a similar crime in Perth, where knotted sheets were used to climb out of quarantine, a man was held in custody for two weeks before being fined $4800. Like the football fans, Travis Jay Myles, 39, was named and shamed.
In New Zealand, one 38-year-old Whanganui man was given a month in jail, but only after he had been caught and verbally warned five times about alert level 4 restrictions. His name was not released.
Will WA's remarkable two-year run of luck hold, however? As New Zealand has already seen, success with Covid brings complacency. Queensland and Western Australia have the slowest vaccination rollouts in the country. Western Australia has so far twice-vaccinated 1,138,184 of its citizens or 54.7 per cent. Only seven out of 10 West Australians have had their first shot. For Aboriginal people, it is just 2 in 10.
WA Premier Mark McGowan, who gained early success and backing with a war-like "island within an island" speech, has previously said he would set a date for reopening about two months after WA reached 80 to 90 per cent vaccination.
With the aid of its willingness to make clear examples of those who cheat the rules, Western Australia might just do it.
