The saga continues as WA Premier, Mark McGowan, responded to Qantas CEO, Alan Joyce’s, repeated likening of Western Australia to North Korea as “over the top.”
This came as the state’s former Health Minister and current Tourism Minister, Roger Cook, invited Joyce for some ‘delicious humble pie’ after he apologised that late notice of WA’s border re-opening meant fewer flights planned for the airline.
The Qantas CEO said the flying kangaroo was scrambling to be ready on time.
“I don’t know what the extra month has given us in Perth,” he told Channel Seven.
“We were planned ready and organised to open up on the 5th of February, now we’re struggling to meet the 3rd of March because we have people on leave who we asked to take leave.
“It’s a very disorderly opening. We’ll be putting capacity on, but it could have been done a lot better than this, and it’s disappointing we had this wobble for a month.”
Joyce apologised for not meeting the capacity they would like then fired off another North Korea comparison.
“But it’s great finally this country is reunited. We’re no long North Korea and South Korea, we have one country again,” he said.
But as you can probably guess, McGowan was not too happy about that.
“Comparing us to North Korea is a bit over the top,” he said.
“A repressive dictatorship that murders hundreds of thousands of people, compared with a successful democracy, full of freedoms, and the best economy in the world.
“I think that’s an unfair comparison.”
Cook agreed with the WA Premier and went so far as to say he was confident that there would not be many issues getting flights into and out of Perth Airport once the border opens.
In response to Joyce’s comparison, the tourism minister said he would “leave the armchair critics on the east coast to their business.
“We know that when the passengers come back, the flights will be put on, at the end of the day Alan Joyce wants to make a profit,” Cook said.
“And he knows that Western Australia because it’s such a strong economy, is an important profit centre for that company.
“So, he’ll behave himself in due course and hopefully he’ll be able to eat some delicious humble pie when he comes to WA and sees just how good it is here.”
The jabs between the WA politicians and Joyce come after McGowan’s recent announcement to re-open Western Australia’s border on 3 March.
“March 3 will be a step forward for Western Australia, a safe step forward, taken at the right time, in the right way, for the right reasons,” McGowan said in his announcement on Friday.
“There comes a point where the border is redundant, because we’ll already have the growth of cases here, having the border is no longer effective.”
