South Australian Public Health (Immunisation and Early Childhood Services) Amendment Bill

Introduction and First Reading

Mr PICTON (Kaurna) (11:17): Obtained leave and introduced a bill for an act to amend the South Australian Public Health Act 2011. Read a first time.

Second Reading

Mr PICTON (Kaurna) (11:18): I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

This is the third time that the South Australian Labor Party has sought to introduce these provisions to the parliament. The first time was 2½ years ago when the now Leader of the Opposition in the other place introduced provisions to set up a no jab no play system in South Australian early education childcare centres and kindergartens. Since then, this has been blocked and blocked and blocked. We have had 2½ years of no action and complete delay on introducing these. Now we have gone through the complete farce of having this proroguing of the parliament. We are now seeking to reintroduce these provisions for the third time.

The obvious reason for doing this is to keep children safe—to keep children safe in our early education, in our childcare centres and in our kindergartens. We are now following what has happened in New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia and Queensland, all of which have no jab no play policies in place. Victoria, New South Wales and WA have very similar schemes to what we have been proposing here for 2½ years. It is just absolutely shameful that this policy has been delayed and that we have not had this in place. There is really no excuse for why the government has not progressed this.

This has been another example of legislation we have sought to reintroduce in this parliament since the election, and week after week after week the government delayed our dealing with that. They put off this debate on this bill for no other reason than they wanted to delay this legislation. It is absolutely disgraceful that South Australian kids have not had the benefit of this.

One of the most important reasons for having this legislation is the children who cannot be immunised due to their medical conditions. There are children who are immunosuppressed, who cannot get vaccines for a range of different conditions that are completely vaccine preventable, but they therefore need the rest of the community, and particularly those children they will be associating with in child care and kindergartens, to be vaccinated to help protect them.

Sadly, without these provisions in place we cannot be assured that those other children are vaccinated. We know that there is great support in the community for doing it. While there will always be some anti-vaxers peddling their pseudoscience and things that they have found on the internet, the vast majority of South Australians support this measure, the vast majority of South Australians want to see it in place and they scratch their heads as to why this has been delayed for 2½ years.

I am sure avid readers of Hansard will be able to look back at the previous debates that we have had on this in the parliament and see my speech and the now Leader of the Opposition's speech 2½ years ago in the other place for the background of this. The bill will make mandatory immunisations that align with the National Immunisation Program childhood schedule. They include hepatitis B, whooping cough, polio, measles, mumps, rubella and strains of meningococcal that are currently on the schedule.

It will improve our coverage while reducing pockets of underimmunisation. This will apply to childcare centres, long day care, family day care, preschool, kindergartens, rural care programs, mobile childcare services and occasional care. There will be a maximum penalty of $30,000 for any person who provides an early childhood service and enrols a child without the appropriate exemption or immunisation history required.

As I said, this has been in place in a number of states now for a number of years. We had a previous consultation process that was undertaken back in 2017. The then Liberal prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, was one of the avid backers of this measure to make sure that this was in place, but since then we have had very little action. In fact, this bill has now been delayed in this parliament 27 different times. Most of the time it has been the member for Hammond who stands up and moves that this bill be adjourned or deferred, and we do not get to debate it and we do not get to have a vote on it.

Mr Pederick: Or postponed.

Mr PICTON: Twenty-seven different times you have postponed this and stopped this from being debated in this parliament. I think people want to know why you have done that, why you have stopped this being debated.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

Mr PICTON: We have been trying to get this passed for 2½ years and you have stopped it being debated 27 different times. I think that is disgraceful. Now what we see is the government saying, 'No, we've got this new idea. We are going to do no jab no play,' and they are introducing their own bill, which is almost exactly identical to the bill we have been trying to get passed for 2½ years. I think that amount of hypocrisy from the government, when they are the ones who have been blocking this, they are the ones who have been stopping it, is absolutely disgraceful. This could have been in place for 2½ years if it had not been blocked by the now government and previously when they were in opposition.

This is widely supported by the community. Most of the childcare centres are enthusiastic supporters of this. Every time any polling is done on this measure, huge numbers of people say that they want to support it because they want to support their kids, they want to support those children who cannot get vaccinated and make sure we have herd immunity in our community from all these different, very serious and potentially deadly diseases, which we can eradicate if we make sure that vaccines are in place to do that.

I endorse this legislation for the parliament yet again. I hope that after 2½ years of delay we can actually get this passed and make sure that this is in place. I hope that we will get an explanation from the minister at some point as to why last year and the year before he kept blocking this legislation. He raised serious doubts about it last year. He went to great lengths to raise concerns about it last year, but now, apparently, he has turned around. I think that requires an explanation from him for why he took that action last year that delayed this being in place to protect our kids in South Australia. The time for acting has well passed. Let's get up in place with what is happening in other states and make sure that this is not delayed any longer.

Debate adjourned on motion of Mr Pederick.