The Shadow Treasurer and Shadow Minister for Small Business Dr Steve Thomas says that business and industry have been left to carry the can for compliance with the McGowan Government’s COVID rules, placing an unfair and onerous burden on them.
“Business is already struggling to understand the rules given the uncertainty the State Government is repeatedly delivering, and it is completely unfair for the Government to abandon its role of enforcement and make business and industry pick up that slack” Dr Thomas said.
“The rules are made by Mark McGowan, but nobody appears to be enforcing them.”
WA Police have made it clear that they will not be checking on businesses to ensure compliance on issues like vaccine mandates, and the Government has admitted under questioning in Parliament that it is in fact the already overwhelmed Health Department who are authorised to do so.
“There are apparently 59 people in the Health Department tasked with checking that business is complying, but they don’t appear to be doing much because business is contacting me with concerns that they are losing staff to businesses that don’t enforce the vaccine mandates” Dr Thomas said.
On the 9th of December the Government confirmed that 59 staff members of the Department of Health have been appointed to oversee the compliance of vaccination and the are empowered to view evidence of employee vaccination.
“There appears to be no evidence of that occurring however” Dr Thomas said. “Instead, the Government is simply leaving business to comply or refuse to, and some businesses appear to be taking advantage of the slack oversight to flout the rules.”
“It is widely known that there are labour shortages around the state, especially in construction, and it is outrageous that some non-compliant businesses seem to be gaining an advantage over those doing the right thing.”
“The McGowan Government seems intent on punishing those who do the right thing and this inadvertently rewards those doing the wrong thing or cheating the system.”
“I am calling on the Government to outline immediately what compliance they have conducted to date on the WA businesses, and to ensure that those who are complying with the Premier’s mandates are not being penalised by losing staff to those who are not.”