WA Tourism Minister Slams Qantas CEO For Comparing State To North Korea

Roger Cook, the state’s former health minister and current tourism minister, invited Joyce to have a “delicious humble pie” after he apologized for the late notice of WA’s border re-opening which meant fewer flights operating from Perth due to late notice of the reopening of the state border.

W.A. Tourism Minister Roger Cook lashed out Qantas CEO Alan Joyce for comparing the state of Western Australia to the communist North Korean regimes.

When Mr Joyce criticized WA Premier Mark McGowan earlier this week for delaying the border reopening, Mr McGowan announced it would be done in one month instead, giving Qantas only 12 days to plan flights.

To this, the Minister of Tourism responded by saying he would “let the armchair critics on the east coast to their business”.

A sceptic of Qantas’ claims, Cook said he was convinced there would be sufficient flights.

“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,” he said.

“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.”

Mr Joyce had previously questioned why the border reopened after a month of delays and what would be achieved with it.

There will be fewer flights available when Qantas reopens on March 3, the airline’s CEO said.

“We were planned, ready and organised to open up on February 5. Now we’re struggling to meet on the 3rd of March because we have people on leave,” he told Sunrise on Monday morning.

“It is a disorderly opening, but we will put a capacity on it, but it could have been done a lot better than this and it is all for a month.

“(But) finally our country is reunited, we’re no longer North Korea and South Korea. We have one country again.”

Because it is so successful, Qantas wants the Perth-London service reinstated, according to Airlineratings.com editor Geoffrey Thomas. “That Perth-London service was their most profitable flight,” Mr Thomas said to Sky News Australia.

While fully vaccinated international arrivals and triple vaccinated domestic arrivals will not be needed to quarantine, unvaccinated travellers will face a seven-day quarantine and will be capped at 70 per week when the WA borders are reopened on 3 March.

The state’s tourism economy will take some time to return to pre-pandemic levels, according to the state’s Tourism Minister.

“I don’t think we’re going to see an automatic overnight explosion of tourism anywhere in Australia,” he said.

“It’s going to take a while for the world to open back up, but we know there are a lot of people wanting to come to Western Australia.”