Editorial: Isn’t essence of leadership the act of making unpopular decisions when it’s the right thing to do?

In recent days Premier Mark McGowan has repeatedly said that his decision to backtrack on the planned re-opening of WA’s borders on February 5 had been very popular with the public. Publicly, to industry bodies and (we hear) even privately to prominent West Australians, Mr McGowan said the masses were on board with the delay. Indeed, Mr McGowan said as much in a Friday press conference following the now controversial Thursday evening announcement that broke the February 5 vow. “To be frank with you, I’ve been contacted by many people very happy with the announcement we’ve made,” he said. “And I mean many people because it gives them the opportunity to get vaccinated and it gives them the opportunity to protect the health of themselves and their loved ones.” The West Australian would argue that relief for the border staying up because of fears hospitals aren’t ready is different to an endorsement of the Premier’s lack of preparation. But that aside, when did the popular decision morph into becoming the right decision? Isn’t the very essence of leadership the act of making unpopular decisions when it’s the right thing to do? After all, there have been many (too many) bad political decisions that have been popular. The border backflip has caused consternation among all West Australians. Everyone has an opinion and even the medical community is clearly divided. Intensive care specialist Luke Torre — who works at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital and is a professor at Notre Dame University — has started an online petition calling for the border to open on February 5 as planned. “In an imperfect world, we have the perfect conditions to open our borders to our country and the world,” the petition reads. And in an opinion piece in today’s newspaper, Australian Medical Association national president Omar Khorshid criticised the decision to delay the border reopening indefinitely. “The border was never going to fully protect us against Omicron the way it has for the previous variants,” he writes. Last week, after the Premier decided to break his social contract with the people of Western Australia on reopening our State, we wrote a line in our editorial which since then has gained a lot of momentum. We wrote: “If WA can’t be prepared to open after two years, an economic boom, a relatively healthy population that lives in mostly hot weather and with an urban sprawl that means there’s little human congestion . . . then who the hell can be prepared?” We could have added to that list the State’s sky-high vaccination rate, which stood at 89.7 per cent of people aged 12 and over being fully inoculated on Monday. Forgive us for going down a familiar route but it could be said that if Mark McGowan can’t be brave enough to make the right call (not simply the popular call) after 10 years as the WA Labor leader and a landslide election win that decimated his Opposition and left it with just two seats in the Lower House then who the hell can? Responsibility for the editorial comment is taken by WAN Editor-in-Chief Anthony De Ceglie