COVID-19 Vaccination

Mr PICTON (Kaurna) (14:31): My question is to the Premier. Will there be sufficient resources for South Australian police to check the vaccination status of every entrant to South Australia after 23 November?

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier) (14:31): That's not the intention of SA Police, and again this is something they have already made abundantly clear. We will not be having long-term borders in place in South Australia. We will be making sure that we can check people on a random basis to make sure that we have compliance, and there will be penalties put in place if people aren't doing the right thing.

By and large, we move to a different phase of the disease now. With the earlier phases, of course, we didn't want a single case coming into South Australia because that could have sparked widespread community transmission. As I have already pointed out in answer to every single question I have had so far, Delta is coming. We will have cases in South Australia: this is unavoidable. It would have been unavoidable even if we had kept the border arrangements in place.

But what the modellers tell us is that we can move to a new arrangement now in terms of protecting people. The frontline is going to be vaccination, and this is why we say that the most important message we can give to all South Australians now is: please get vaccinated. The vast majority of people who have been along have left extraordinarily happy with the service. It has been efficient, it has been courteous and of course it has provided them with the level of protection that we know it provides.

If we look at why we need people to get vaccinated, it's really to massively reduce the transmission of the disease, and this is, if you like, the number one issue. But the number two issue is that, even if you do contract the disease, what will happen is that the symptoms you experience will be at a much, much lower level, so you are less likely to be admitted into hospital, go into ICU or onto a ventilator.

In fact, many people who contract the disease may even not know they have had it once they have been vaccinated. This is why it is so important to get to 80 per cent, and then to get to 85 per cent and then 90 per cent for those 12 and above, which is the next major threshold for us in South Australia, and then to continue to move forward to get as many people vaccinated in our state as possible. As I have said, there has been a great level of cooperation with the people of South Australia since day one.

If you had asked me three months ago whether we would get to 80 per cent by the middle of November, I wasn't sure, but we have seen it already occur in other places like Victoria, New South Wales and the ACT, who are all well on the way, if they have not already surpassed that threshold, so I have every expectation that South Australia will do exactly the same. We expect to get to 80 per cent double-vaccinated, 16 and over, on 23 November. There is no point in delaying that movement. It's not like that day we are going to have a massive explosion in the number of cases. We will still keep some of those basic controls in place.

One of the things we are doing is to say that borders are only open to those who are double-vaccinated. There will be some arrangements still in place for those people who come from an LGA which has a low vaccination rate and community transmission present at the same time. It might be a situation, for example, for a state like New South Wales perhaps that has community transmission. They may also have some LGAs remaining below 80 per cent.

Those people would still need to be doing quarantine here in South Australia. But we expect all those LGAs to very likely get up to being above 80 per cent and then above 90 per cent. With above 90 per cent, and no community transmission in that jurisdiction, there is no requirement either for testing or for isolation.