The sudden resignation of Mark McGowan as Western Australian Premier leads to one question: why? When another very popular WA Labor premier, Brian Burke, resigned in 1988 to take up the job of Ambassador to Ireland and the Holy See, he, too, was seen as unbeatable and the Liberals at the time were a poor opposition. However, within 18 months he was back in Perth having to deal with the WA Inc. scandal that arose out of his government’s close relationship with several businessmen which cost the WA taxpayer hundreds of millions of dollars to bail them out of their troubles.
Any time McGowan or his ministers are challenged on their hysterical response to Covid, they trot out with breathtaking arrogance the line that it was ‘world class’ and that they ‘kept people safe’. He repeated ad nauseam that he needed to ‘crush the virus’.
However, McGowan’s departure may well be timed to avoid impending scandal on this very score, since two independent reports have been released that expose McGowan, his successor Roger Cook and Health Minister Amber-Jade Sanderson as world-class duffers.
The first relates to the procurement of rapid antigen tests in WA. Presently they are being handed out for free by the bucketload in shopping centres, schools and workplaces around the state, mainly because they are due to expire soon, if they haven’t already.
As part of her investigation into the financial impacts of the Covid response, state auditor-general Caroline Spencer declared that the spending on RATs was excessive and lacked co-ordinated planning. Spencer found that, ‘An initial intention by health entities to spend $3 million on RATs for health workers and returning travellers rapidly evolved to purchasing $440 million worth of RATs – around twice the cost of the Bunbury Hospital redevelopment.’
You read that right. It cost twice as much as the redevelopment of a hospital in the state’s second-biggest city. It gets worse. Spencer went on:
‘Along with the $140 million spent by the Department of Finance on RATs, public entities spent the equivalent of 10 per cent of the State’s 2022 operating surplus on diagnostic plastics without demonstrable evidence of clear, considered and coordinated planning or ongoing advice as to the necessity of the expenditure.’ In short, the state – under McGowan, Cook (as former health minister) and Sanderson’s watch – burnt $580 million of our money on the tests after initially expecting to spend just $3 million.
‘I have never before witnessed such escalation in the cost of a program over such a short timeframe, occurring with a lack of due consideration of the impacts, or without a record of anyone pausing to ask what level of procurement was sufficient and whether this had been achieved,’ Spencer damningly wrote.
What is more, the state government is now spending more millions renting warehouses to hold the surplus tests that will soon expire.
Therefore, to breathtaking arrogance, we can add gross incompetence.
The second report relates to the Covid vaccine rollout in WA.
The state’s Health Department recently published the West Australian Vaccine Safety Surveillance report for 2021. Its results show an ‘exponential increase’ in adverse events, with hospitals struggling to cope.
In introducing the most aggressive mandatory vaccination policies in the country, McGowan’s response to anyone who dared to criticise him was to call them, among other things, ‘selfish’, ‘wacky’, ‘nutty’, ‘dropkicks’, ‘morons’, and he added that they should ‘grow a brain’.
Overseeing the ‘Western Australian experiment’ (as McGowan himself described it) were Cook (as health minister), and the state’s ‘Vaccine Commander’ – a title that could have been invented by Orwell himself – police commissioner Chris Dawson, now state governor.
As noted on page four of the report, ‘The number of adverse events following immunisation (AEFI) reported to Western Australia Vaccine Safety Surveillance (WAVSS) was significantly higher in 2021 than in previous years… due to the introduction of the Covid-19 vaccination program.’
At page 11 the report outlined that almost four million doses of Covid vaccination were administered in WA in 2021, with 10,428 adverse effects after immunisation reported in the same period; 57 per cent of these were treated in hospitals or an emergency department.
The highest month for AEFI reports was October, the same month that vaccine mandates were announced for most of the workforce and the vaccine eligibility criteria were expanded to people aged 18 and over.
As demonstrated at pages 17 and 18, there were over 1,400 adverse effect reports for all vaccinations that month, most of which were related to Covid vaccination.
In fact, reported rates of myocarditis and pericarditis following vaccination with Moderna and Pfizer increased and were much higher than national rates reported by the TGA in the same period.
Disturbingly, as described on page 25, the highest rates of pericarditis following Moderna were age groups 25 to 29 years (53.5 per 100,000 doses) and 30 to 39 (27.0 per 100,000 doses). The highest rates of pericarditis following Pfizer were age group 30 to 39 years (20.6 per 100,000 doses), 25 to 29 years (17.7 per 100,000 doses) and 18 to 24 (16.0 per 100,000 doses).
These, of course, are the age groups least at risk from Covid.
Throughout 2021, the experience in the rest of the world, as reported in these pages, was that the Covid vaccine was responsible for serious adverse events at a far greater rate than other vaccines. Moreover, throughout 2021, it was confirmed on numerous occasions that Covid vaccines do not prevent transmission of the virus, thus undermining the justification for imposing mandatory vaccination policies.
Even so, McGowan was adamant that ‘the virus will find those who are not vaccinated’. So, to breathtaking arrogance and gross incompetence, we might add wilful negligence.
Mind you, what else would you expect from a premier whose emergency minister wasn’t even reading the health advice before repeatedly extending the ‘state of emergency’ declaration, thus perpetuating a continuous abuse of executive power.
Rather than being ‘tired and exhausted’, maybe the real reason for McGowan’s departure is to avoid accountability over his disastrous Covid maladministration, for which the people of WA are paying, not just out their pockets, but, in far too many cases, so needlessly with their own health and livelihoods.