Suspicious Package Scare at WA Premier’s Office Amid Mandate Backlash

Police tape at a crime scene in Australia. Robert Cianflone/Getty Images

A swathe of chemical specialists, police, ambulance and firefighters appeared at the electorate office of Western Australia (WA) Premier Mark McGowan on Tuesday in response to the discovery of a package filled with an unknown white substance.

The item was seized and taken to the WA Chem Centre for analysis, with preliminary testing indicating the substance to be innocuous.

“Inquiries are continuing,” a WA Police spokesperson told The Epoch Times.

It comes amid growing tensions between the WA government and West Australians who disagree with the state’s mandate policies, measures which McGowan has called the “broadest proof of vaccination requirements in the nation.”

Protestors rally against vaccination mandates during the World Wide Rally for Freedom event in Perth, Australia on Nov. 20, 2021. The Epoch Times

Currently, all staff and patrons must be fully vaccinated to enter hospitality, entertainment, and fitness venues. In addition, visitors to aged care facilities will need to be vaccinated, with hospitals granting exemptions only to “essential” visitors.

McGowan has said “life will be very difficult” for those unwilling to get vaccinated, as well as accusing them of being selfish and putting others at risk.

“If you choose to remain unvaccinated, and at this point, it’s certainly a choice. You’re choosing to put yourself at risk, you’re choosing to put the people around you at risk, and you’re choosing to increase the burden on our health staff,” he said in a Facebook post on Jan. 13.

McGowan has been criticised for telling protestors standing against mandates to “grow a brain,” as well as referring to individuals refusing to demonstrate proof of vaccination as “dropkicks”—an Australian slur referring to a stupid or worthless person.

Western Australia Premier Mark McGowan at the COVID-19 Vaccination Clinic at Claremont Showgrounds in Perth, Australia on May 3, 2021. Photo by Paul Kane/Getty Images

Further, McGowan’s electorate office in Rockingham, Perth has previously been forced to close down after staff allegedly received abhorrent threats.

“There’s been death threats, there’s been threats to rape my staff, there have been people threatening to bomb my office,” McGowan told reporters on Nov. 17.

“Someone turned up with an armoured car with a machine gun on the top,” he added.

Some of McGowan’s recent public appearances have been met with angry crowds who have decried the government’s vaccination mandates.

One video shows a large crowd booing McGowan as he is escorted by police (video) during a visit to Bunbury on Nov. 21.

Another video posted on Nov. 12 shows McGowan who, during a visit to Manjimup to encourage the vaccination rollout, enters a medical centre through a backdoor to avoid angry protestors standing out front.

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Former law reform commissioner and head of law at Sheridan Institute of Higher Education, Augusto Zimmermann, condemns violent threats against the premier but said he believes McGowan’s actions and words have been a primary contributor to the reaction from the public.

“He’s inciting the crowds against him. He is actually provoking people by the way in which he refers to the population as a whole because his attitude and behaviour are not ones comparable to a democratic leader,” Zimmermann previously told The Epoch Times.