COVID-19 State Government Response

Mr MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Leader of the Opposition) (14:18): My question is to the Premier. Will the Premier commit to releasing publicly the Doherty modelling that has been so instructive to the government's deliberations thus far?

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier) (14:18): Just to reiterate the comments that were made on this only a few moments ago in our press conference, the answer to that is yes. It's going to have to be in a consolidated form because we have, of course, received some information from the Doherty Institute which was provided to the national cabinet. We have received some specific to South Australia, and my understanding is it's been a reasonably iterative process where we have gone off and said, 'Well, what about this measure versus that measure?'

A lot of it comes down to what test, trace, isolate and quarantine arrangements we are prepared to keep in South Australia and for what period of time, whether that be partial or optimal, the definitions of how many people would go into quarantine. It's a live model; data is being fed into it on a continuous basis, but Professor Nicola Spurrier said that she hopes in the coming weeks that they will be able to share some of that modelling with the people of South Australia.

It's important that we do so because we are asking the people of South Australia to continue to work with SA Health, with South Australia Police and with the government of South Australia to make sure that we continue the very good circumstance that we have had and that we have enjoyed over a long period of time.

There will be some people who are frustrated or anxious about the decision that we have made to lift those state border restrictions. That needs to be put up against the increased anxiety and frustration that people feel about the border restrictions. There is no doubt that this arrangement, where we have had a high level of restrictions over the last 19 months, has led to very significant impacts in terms of mental health in South Australia.

All these things have had to be taken into account. I feel very sure that we have been in a fortunate situation to navigate this situation in our state in partnership with the people of South Australia and I expect that that will continue into the future. It doesn't mean that it's going to be all smooth sailing. We cannot keep the Delta variant out, but the longer we keep it out and the longer we push off any significant numbers into the future, the more protected South Australians are going to be.

I finish on this: this is still essentially the disease of the unvaccinated. When we look across the border into New South Wales, into the ACT, into Victoria and we look at the numbers of new infections, the rate of hospitalisation, admissions into intensive care and those people who are going onto ventilators, it is still by and large those people who have not been vaccinated. I know there are those who tell me that they don't want to be vaccinated. I plead with them to look very carefully at the data around this because to me it's chalk and cheese. By having that vaccination you will be protecting yourself, your family, your workplace and your community. Ultimately, you would be protecting our entire state and that is something I would be very grateful for.

If we go back several months, there were probably 30 to 35 per cent of people who were telling me that they were not going to be vaccinated. That has changed. That has been a very changed circumstance with the peaks that we have seen in New South Wales, Victoria and the ACT. As I was saying in an earlier answer, we are now seeing a very high level of vaccination rate in New South Wales and the ACT, and Victoria is coming up as well.

The consequence of that is, of course, that the infection rate is massively plummeting in New South Wales. I think today it was only just above 200 new infections in New South Wales. We are about one-fifth or one-quarter of the size of New South Wales and we won't be opening until it's safe to do so. The experts inform us that 23 November is the date. Keep in mind that we will be starting this from a zero perspective. We won't have widespread seeding like has existed in those other jurisdictions. For all those reasons, we have arrived at the date of 23 November.