Former prime minister Scott Morrison has admitted he made a “massive mistake” during the COVID pandemic, conceding that backing a legal challenge to Western Australia’s hard border closures helped cost the Coalition government the 2022 election.
Speaking to journalist Paul Kelly for his upcoming book The Twilight of Exceptionalism – The Liberal and Conservative Era 2013–22, Mr Morrison reflected on the federal government’s decision to support billionaire businessman Clive Palmer in his failed High Court challenge against WA’s border restrictions.
“It was a massive mistake,” Mr Morrison said, revealing that senior Liberal figures including former finance minister Mathias Cormann and former attorney-general Christian Porter had encouraged him to back the move. Former health minister Greg Hunt, however, had urged caution.
At the height of the pandemic, Western Australia shut its borders to the rest of the country for 697 days under then-premier Mark McGowan, a move that proved enormously popular with voters in the state despite criticism elsewhere in Australia.
Mr Morrison said the issue became politically toxic in the west, with many voters seeing the battle as “Palmer versus the state, with Morrison on Palmer’s side”. The fallout contributed to a significant swing against the Coalition in WA, where Labor picked up four seats at the 2022 federal election – enough to help deliver a majority government for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
In a notable reversal, Mr Morrison now says Western Australia’s tough approach ultimately made sense.
According to excerpts from the interview, the former prime minister acknowledged that the border closures did not create the economic damage many had feared and that the state’s strategy was less disruptive than expected.
The comments offer one of Mr Morrison’s clearest acknowledgements yet that some of the Coalition’s pandemic-era decisions carried a heavy political cost.
The reflections form part of a broader examination of the Liberal Party’s years in government under former prime ministers Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull and Mr Morrison, with Kelly’s book due to be released next week.
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