Agriculture Minister David Littleproud has levelled a stinging attack on Mark McGowan, calling on the Western Australian Premier to just “grow up”.
Western Australia currently has hard borders in place to New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland following an outbreak of COVID-19 infections in the various states.
Mr McGowan had also recently criticised the approach taken within New South Wales in dealing with the latest virus outbreaks.
“There’s five states and territories doing one thing, and one state doing something different,” Mr McGowan said on Monday.
“The states and territories that want to eliminate the virus, I think have the right approach,” he said.
Mr Littleproud told Sky News host Chris Smith, “federation is failing this country at the moment because we’ve petulant premiers just wanting to act like teenagers”.
“Trying to score cheap political points rather than lead”.
“Federation was meant for us to work together.
“McGowan’s going to an election in March, he’s using it as a political advantage to himself.
“It’s time for the premiers to grow up, they want to be big boys and girls now and have ownership of a lot of the public health and make all the big calls, but with that comes a responsibility of working together.
“And unless they’re going to do that, they should bugger off because effectively the rest of the country’s had a gutful of this”.