Coronavirus

Mr PICTON (Kaurna) (15:02): My question is to the Premier. Is there a shortage of hand sanitiser at the Women's and Children's Hospital or at any of our public hospitals?

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier) (15:02): Well, I'm not aware of any, but one of the things that we are doing is looking at all of the critical components that we need to have in place, whether that be hand sanitiser, whether it be PPE, whether it be masks (of course, part of that PPE), whether it be testing reagent. There is essentially, at the moment, a global shortage of all these things, so I don't think that anybody who is watching this issue would not be aware of the massive spike in demand for some of these fundamental components of our response to this global pandemic.

However, I am assured by the people within SA Health—who I think are doing an excellent job—that we do not have any critical shortages at the moment. That does not mean to say that we are not monitoring very carefully the availability of all of these supplies. I think we were very open and up front earlier in the week when we made it clear that there was a shortage within some of our schools of hand sanitiser, and this was unacceptable. We made that very clear.

We have 900 schools, preschools and educational facilities across South Australia, and around 13 of those were without the necessary requirement. We made sure that we rectified that as quickly as possible, and I would like to thank all of the people who are working in the education department at the moment for the outstanding work that they are doing.

I have got to say that this is a time when we recognise the great contribution of the Public Service that we have in South Australia. All public servants in all departments are playing their role in helping us combat the COVID-19 virus, and I thank them very, very sincerely.