Hospitality Industry

Mr MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Leader of the Opposition) (14:17): My question is to the Premier. Given the Premier's previous answer, is he ruling out providing any additional support or compensation specifically to the hospitality industry and is the Premier aware of the up to $30,000 cash grant made available for Victorian hospitality industry businesses during the course of their lockdown?

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier) (14:18): I am not sure it's a fair comparison with Victoria. More than 800 people lost their lives—

Mr Brown: You wish you were Dan Andrews.

The SPEAKER: The member for Playford—

Mr Brown: That's right, that's what I said. You wish you were Dan Andrews. You're a joke, a total joke.

The SPEAKER: The member for Playford will leave for 30 minutes under 137A, and he will leave in silence.

The honourable member for Playford having withdrawn from the chamber:

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: We have a very different situation from Victoria. More than 800 people lost their lives in the second wave in Victoria. The restrictions, the very heavy restrictions which had an incredibly detrimental effect on lives and on businesses in Victoria, lasted for 112 days.

We were facing a very similar second wave in South Australia. I want to commend SA Health, SA Police and all people involved in making sure that we could stand up our defence of a second wave here in South Australia. In particular, with regard to this, I would like to highlight the excellent work done in testing in South Australia, led by Dr Tom Dodd, the clinical lead of SA Pathology, and the way that we moved from 2,000 to 3,000 tests per day to 19,000 within the space of a week.

I would like to particularly identify and thank the people who work within the Communicable Disease Control Branch, those people who are doing the contact tracing, those people who are doing that forensic detective work. They have done an extraordinary job. In particular, I would like to thank the lead there, Dr Katina D'Onise, and her team. This is very, very tough work.

Again, we had to go from doing the contact tracing on a number of people each month to thousands of people each day. This was an extraordinary ramp-up effort in a very short period of time. I would like to particularly identify that they were supported in that task by contact tracers at the commonwealth level and contact tracers from Western Australia, New South Wales and Victoria. That combined national approach to putting that net over every person who came into contact with those infected with the coronavirus kept our state safe.

But my biggest accolades go to the people of South Australia who knew the consequences if we didn't take immediate action. They supported the directions put in place by the State Coordinator, Commissioner Grant Stevens, and they listened on a daily basis to the work and the words of Professor Nicola Spurrier, our Chief Public Health Officer in South Australia. Working together, this state stared down a second wave here in South Australia and unequivocally held off what would have been an absolute dire consequence for every business, every family and every individual in South Australia.

That doesn't mean to say that there weren't some businesses who were disproportionately affected. Many have been affected, but many more—many more—would have been adversely affected if we did not work as quickly as we could. Now we have supports in place. We have a budget which provides $4 billion worth of stimulus and support—$5 billion if you include the match funding from the federal government—for the programs that we have announced in our budget.

We have put payroll tax reductions in place. We have deferred gambling taxes. We have waived licensing fees in South Australia. We have supported businesses, particularly those in the CBD, both directly as businesses and indirectly through the Great State program, and we will always look for opportunities to do that work and continue to do that work to support businesses and employment in our state.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Before I call the leader, I call to order the Minister for Education and the Deputy Premier.