Coronavirus Restrictions

The Hon. D.C. VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN (Stuart—Minister for Energy and Mining) (15:17): As all members of this house would know, we are working our way through a very difficult time in South Australia, as people are all over the world, in regard to the coronavirus. We are not careless, and not taking anything for granted, but we are optimistic that there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Our Premier has led our state extraordinarily well, with extraordinary advice from the Commissioner of Police, the Chief Public Health Officer and many others. He has taken the view that we will follow every single bit of expert medical advice that comes our way in regard to restrictions but, ideally, no more. Our government has not wanted to impose unnecessary restrictions on the state due to the coronavirus. We do everything required, everything recommended, everything that is healthy, but no more where it can be avoided.

Members will remember that at the beginning of this challenging time the Premier made a call to say that people should still attend the closing festivities of the Fringe. That was an opportunity that was assessed as being safe; it was fun. Why would you prevent that if it was not necessary? You will remember, Mr Speaker, the Premier encouraging people over the Easter break to get out and about and enjoy Easter in a safe, responsible way, keeping personal distance, keeping personal hygiene at the highest possible level, doing everything as responsibly as we can, but please enjoy it. We saw exactly the same thing again on the June long weekend.

After our last sitting week here in parliament, I drove home to Wilmington on the Thursday night, as is my wish at the end of a parliamentary sitting week so that I can be in my electorate all day Friday. I have to say that the traffic on the highway between 6.30 and 10.15, or whatever it was as I was driving home, on the whole was quite significant, much more than on a normal long weekend.

Being out and about in my electorate on Friday and throughout that long weekend, it was an enormous pleasure to see people out and about: country people out and about and metro Adelaide people out and about. I know this was happening on Eyre Peninsula, on Yorke Peninsula, in the South-East, in the Riverland, in the outback and in many other parts, as well as in my electorate. It is very important that this is allowed to happen. Our Premier has done everything he can to sensibly reduce restrictions in the same way that he sensibly imposed them when it was necessary at the start.

Activity in regional South Australia is absolutely vital for regional communities. Getting tourists out and about is absolutely critical. It is important for those tourists and Adelaide people to be out and about in country areas—beautiful weather, beautiful scenery, beautiful people to engage with, wonderful tourism and produce experiences to enjoy. However, it is also very important for local people, because it is creating jobs in regional areas, where it is very hard to do.

It is creating fantastic social engagement in regional areas. Regional areas have people who get on well and who love working and socialising together, but we are all the richer, in a social way, when metropolitan people come to our area as well and weave their social contributions into our part of the world. So it is incredibly important economically and socially and incredibly important in regard to local employment in country areas.

Another often overlooked fact is that we need tourists in regional South Australia so that we can retain the services that we have there. Let me give you an example. There might be a pub, a hotel, a motel or a supermarket that perhaps only gets 10 per cent of its business from tourism, but if that 10 per cent were to disappear it might also equate to the net profit that business makes over a year. If that 10 per cent is not there, that business may not be able to be there, in which case the other 90 per cent of the customers of that business would not have that business, and we would lose our shops, our service stations, our hotels, etc. So thank you to Adelaide people for coming to regional South Australia. We know you benefit from that, but we benefit from it also.