Canberra Airport’s CEO has furiously declared flights from Perth to the ACT should be banned, until the rules around border closures are established.

Western Australia’s border has been closed to the nation’s capital since late June – the area is still classed as “low risk” – despite the ACT not having had a local COVID case in more than 300 days.

Stephen Byron told Perth LIVE’s Mark Gibson, it’s having a devastating impact.

“It’s a bit tough for us to get mixed up and treated as if we’re Sydneysiders, Canberra is not a suburb of Sydney,” he said.

“And whilst the ACT is wholly within New South Wales, we are hundreds and hundreds of kilometers away… we’ve got no COVID cases here.

“We got back to being only 35 per cent down, but we’re back to being 75 per cent down now, with the Sydney lockdowns and associated actions such as this one.”

He says, he’s tried to contact WA Premier Mark McGowan, to plead his case.

“It does fall a bit on deaf ears, it’s a bit hard to tap-in,” he said.

“We would really love a commitment that you would keep the borders open here to the ACT, to Canberra, for as long as we have no COVID cases.”

Press PLAY to hear Mark Gibson’s chat with Stephen Byron

(Photo: iStock by Getty Images.)