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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2020-04-29 Daily Xml
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Coronavirus, Employment

Mr PICTON (Kaurna) (14:15): My question is to the Premier. Does the Premier agree that a front-line essential worker should get presumptive access to workers compensation if they contract COVID-19 through their workplace? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I explain.

Leave granted.

Mr PICTON: The Premier was previously asked this question, took it on notice and has not provided an answer to the house.

The Hon. S.K. KNOLL: Mr Speaker, I would like to inquire with you whether or not that question is actually—

An honourable member interjecting:

The Hon. S.K. KNOLL: —it is a point of order—something that is subject to a bill that is currently before the house.

The SPEAKER: I am going to take it on face value and allow the question. It might be able to be answered without infringing.

The Hon. S.K. KNOLL: Mr Speaker, the Return to Work (COVID-19 Injury) Amendment Bill is actually something that is sitting as an order of the day on the Notice Paper.

The SPEAKER: I am going to allow a general answer. Obviously it cannot go to the specifics of a bill. If someone would like to answer.

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier) (14:16): I can provide a general answer. I think one of the great things about the health response in South Australia is that we have extraordinarily good contact tracing capability. This is a unit of government that is headed up by Dr Louise Flood. She heads up the Communicable Disease Control Branch. It was originally quite a small capability within SA Health. It has expanded very significantly. In fact, I think at the moment it sits at around 290 people, with a further 150-person surge capacity.

What this really does is it provides great certainty for anybody who contracts the COVID-19 virus that we can do the analysis in a very short period of time to determine how and when they acquired this illness. I think this clears up this issue. We don't need to have this presumption of where it's been determined because we do have, in this case, in this instance, the perfect information in very quick time.

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