Coronavirus

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL (Mawson) (15:13): I rise today to thank the people of South Australia, in particular the people in our local area, for their response to the coronavirus that has changed the way we live and the way we work. In fact, it has changed so much in all of our lives right across the state. I want to congratulate the federal government and the state government. I think both sides of politics at both levels have worked very well together.

I want to thank the police commissioner in South Australia and Professor Nicola Spurrier, who I think has done a tremendous job as the Chief Public Health Officer in South Australia, but without the work of members of our local communities it would have all come to zilch. If people had ignored the directives, ignored the pleas of politicians, health experts and police, then we quite possibly would have been in a very bad way, instead of being in a world-leading position here in South Australia and, indeed, around Australia.

To all those people who have made changes to their lives, thank you. I do not think we are out of the woods yet, and I think we need to heed the advice and the warnings of our health professionals who say that there could well be a second wave if we relax things too much. So I just ask everyone to maintain that 1½ metres of distance between each other. I notice even in here people sort of coming up and whispering to each other and not actually following the 1½-metre rules. I think we should all set an example, whether it is in here or out in our community, for people to follow because we do not want that second wave.

We saw it with the Spanish flu back in 1919. It was the second and third waves that did more damage than the first one. To the people who have lost their jobs and those who have either lost their businesses or are tremendously worried about those businesses, we hope that the economic measures that are being put in place now and those that are still to come will help you through this. If we can keep people connected to the businesses that have employed them over many months or many years then, when things do become a little bit more normal than they have been in the past two months, everyone will be in a better position.

I think the federal package was extremely generous; it has done a good job in many respects. However, like any rescue plan that is put together in a hurry, there will be people and there will be businesses that fall through the cracks. I know that in my electorate office we have been working with individuals and businesses to work with the federal government and the state government to see if we can help them along so that they do not fall through the cracks. The more people who can be supported during this time, the quicker we will come out of it on the other side. I hope we can continue to work in that way.

My office, like I presume many other electorate offices, has not been operating the way we would normally operate. We closed our physical office but we are working from our individual homes in terms of emails and chasing things up, and we are as busy as ever. We plan to reopen, but it will not be business as usual because no-one can operate in the same way we operated in December. We need to maintain the 1.5-metre distances. We need to reduce the risk of us passing on the coronavirus to someone who might come into our electorate office and, by the same token, we need to protect the staff in our offices as well.

As I mentioned, the community has done a tremendous job in adapting and working within the new regime that we need to stay safe, to reduce the risk of the coronavirus getting away from us again. I want to thank all the members of my staff in the electorate office who have been doing a tremendous job in helping the people in our local area at a time when there is a lot of emotional stress on people. Particularly in our electorate, the people of Kangaroo Island who went through those horrendous bushfires are now unable to go out and participate in sport and get out and see each other. We need to be very aware of keeping an eye on the mental health of people over there.

I have not been to the island for seven weeks because of the restrictions on travel. I will be back over there this weekend and cannot wait to catch up with everyone on the island who has been doing it tough. But they are very stoic people and I look forward to seeing them all.