COVID-19 Travel Restrictions

Mr BELL (Mount Gambier) (15:15): My question is to the Premier. Has SA Health requested further resources in order to comply with the legislated 21-day requirement to process travel exemptions? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mr BELL: I have a large caseload at the moment of people who are over the 21 legislated days to be informed:

Rachel, Alex and their two young children relocating from Victoria have purchased a house in Mount Gambier. They have been waiting 36 days;

Jennifer and Daniel are relocating from country Victoria. Their new employer is holding a job for them—35 days;

Lisa and daughter relocating from Victoria—43 days;

Bodie returning to his mother after visiting his father—27 days;

Tim, a returning SA resident after working in Victoria—22 days;

Georgia, a student returning from New South Wales—38 days; and

Richard and Melissa, there is a job waiting for Richard—38 days.

All are getting frustrated that the length of time is beyond the 21 days.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier) (15:16): I thank the member for his question. It is an important question and certainly the situation that exists with regard to the border, particularly the border between Victoria and South Australia, is causing a huge amount of frustration, especially in those border communities but more broadly across South Australia as well. Like the member, I have plenty of people contacting my office on a daily basis making the pleas to let their children back in or for themselves to come back in.

But, as I said earlier today, we currently have in Victoria a very dangerous situation with a record day of new infections—2,300 or 2,297 new infections in the last 24 hours and 18 deaths in that community. The requirement to get back within 21 days I think is an important one so that we can at least give answers to people. Of course, it doesn't mean that they are approved within those 21 days. We are still doing those assessments. If the member or any member has any examples of people who are just not being given an answer within those 21 days, then I would be very keen to hear about them and to make best endeavours to get back to them as quickly as possible.

Obviously, at the moment there are very significant numbers. I haven't had a report today, but we are talking in excess of 5,000 people who are trying to come back in. They are not quite on that number of applications because on one application there might be four or five people, or there could be two or there could just be a single person, but we know there are thousands of people trying to come back in at the moment, especially from Victoria.

I would like to make sure that we can get as many people back across the border as possible but I also want to do it safely. We can see the devastating effects on economies but also on lives and employment if the Delta variant comes in. South Australia is pretty close at the moment.

I want to particularly commend the community down in the South-East for their high-level vaccination rates. We had a scare down there in recent weeks. There was a very significant increase in testing down there. The community takes it really seriously. They do not want the disease to come in. We have also seen a good level of QR code check-ins in the South-East and, of course, good vaccination rates, but we do need to be able to get back to people as quickly as possible.

Sometimes that response, though, is not at this point in time, but I am very hopeful that as the vaccination rate increases in Victoria and they get on top of some of their issues, we may be able to let more people in. In the first instance, though, they will have to do the 14 days of quarantine. Most people are accepting of that. Where it is particularly good for us is where people are double vaccinated and they are not coming directly from an area with high-level infection.

We try as much as possible now to accommodate them doing home-based quarantine. It's particularly important for border communities. They don't want to have to come in from Victoria—from Melbourne, for example. They are living normally in Mount Gambier and they have to go into Adelaide and then pay a fee sometimes to actually do hotel quarantine. We want to be able as much as possible to get them to do that home-based quarantine using that home-based quarantine app.

To the member for Mount Gambier, and in fact to all members in this parliament, if there are things we can be doing when people go beyond the 21 days without a response, then certainly please do not hesitate in letting me know.