Coronavirus

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN (Lee) (15:41): I rise to talk about some of the conversations that I have had with constituents in the last couple of weeks as the coronavirus pandemic makes itself known to our local community. Like just about every one in the electorate of Lee, I share their concerns, I share their fears and I share their sense of bewilderment at times about what we are meant to be doing and when we are meant to be doing it as individuals.

I say 'as individuals', but of course it is not just about the impact on ourselves: it is about the impact on our families; it is about the impact on our community groups and our sporting clubs that we are members of; and for many people I have spoken to in the last two weeks it is about the impact on their businesses, predominantly small businesses.

People are very uncertain, and with uncertainty comes quite often fear, and fear of the future. It is now time, as we have heard from other members, including most recently the member for Florey, for governments to demonstrate strong, decisive, consistent and transparent leadership. People will make what they will of what they have seen on the TV in the last two weeks—particularly from the federal government—as we have received directive followed by updated directive about what we should and should not be doing as we interact with one another in the community.

I agree with many of the people who have spoken to me, particularly early on in the piece, and said, 'Well, it seems to me we should be acting as quickly and as decisively as possible to make sure that we are limiting all of those things that we could be doing which might foster the spread of this virus.' And it seems that we have been receiving at times directives from the commonwealth government that have rebutted the calls from the community, the media and other commentators for swifter and more decisive action, only for days later that action then to be declared by those same leaders as being necessary.

That sense of confusion is disconcerting for people in the community. It is also disconcerting as people see our habits change in the community. They are seeing many people fleeing from shopping at their businesses that they run or coming along to their local cafes, restaurants, hotels, bars and sporting clubs—all of those activities which they usually participate in and all of those entities that people derive their living from.

It is in that context, of course, that the community has a rightful expectation that their governments will act and act very quickly with huge financial resources at their hands to support the community, to support people who might be at risk of losing their jobs and to support people in business.

I congratulate to date the Morrison federal government on bringing down tranches of stimulus packages. I congratulate those state governments interstate who are each spending billions of dollars to support households and businesses in their jurisdictions to try to make sure that as many heads as possible are kept above water during what we can all expect to be a very significant economic downturn, one which may last for a very long period of time.

I also reiterate my call, which I made along with the Leader of the Opposition in a constructive manner, for the state government in South Australia to act more decisively and with greater financial clout to try to support our economy and to try to support households and businesses. The Premier says that he has already released a stimulus package. It is unfortunate that still to date, more than two weeks on, nobody knows how all that money will be spent. Not even a small proportion of that money has yet made its way into the community.

We need to be following the lead of other states. We need to be relieving people of the burden particularly of the massive increases in state taxes, fees and charges from last year's budget. We need to be allowing people to defer their payroll tax. We need to be giving people relief from other state taxes, such as land tax, and we need to get money into the pockets of households and businesses, and we need to do it immediately.

We need to pick those industries that can react quickly, scale up and support economic activity, such as the housing construction industry. We need to support the industries that we all know have suffered the most in the last 10 days, and they are the hospitality and tourism industries. We suggested a $200 million support fund. That should just be the start of the business support and the household support that we see rolled out in the coming days.