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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2021-05-27 Daily Xml
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Hinton, Ms L.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN (Lee) (14:15): A further supplementary, given the Premier's first answer: can the Premier explain to the house how his senior adviser could arrive at a perspective that this is a laughing matter, given the Premier has just advised the house that this is indeed a most serious matter?

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier) (14:15): I thank the member for Lee for his question. I have just made it very clear that (1) I haven't seen this meme, (2) I am not 100 per cent sure what a meme is and (3) of course I and I think the whole of South Australia takes very seriously the situation that is in Victoria.

It's interesting that the opposition are not asking questions about the restrictions or our response in terms of the coronavirus: they are asking questions about social media memes. I think it goes to the heart of the level of interest, the political interest, that those opposite have with the coronavirus. Thank goodness they are not in government during this extraordinary situation.

I am very grateful to the people of South Australia, and all members of this chamber should be very grateful to the people of South Australia, who turned up almost in record numbers yesterday to get themselves tested. I have just been advised from the Minister for Health and Wellbeing, the Hon. Stephen Wade, that more than 7½ thousand tests were administered yesterday. This is one of the highest daily rates in South Australia, certainly in the top 20, and the highest that we have seen for months and months and months. I am very grateful to Dr Tom Dodd, the clinical lead with SA Pathology, and all of their staff for being able to surge that capacity. We have been able to ramp up the opening hours for many of our facilities that do that testing.

I know that there have been delays and I know that this is extraordinarily inconvenient to the people of South Australia, but it is these sacrifices that people are making that have essentially been what has kept our state safe and of course our economy strong, so I am still encouraging people who develop any symptoms whatsoever to go to one of those drive-through clinics, one of the standalone clinics, to get themselves tested and to isolate ahead of getting that result.

One of the things that I was very pleased to learn from SA Pathology this morning was that the turnaround time for that result, despite the massive surge in presentation times, was around 10 hours. This is world class. This is absolutely world class. The good news is that when Professor Nicola Spurrier provided her update to the press today, when we were very concerned about what we now regard as close contacts—people who would have come into contact with somebody who has now been diagnosed as being infected in Victoria—all the results today have come back negative. There is some good news today, and Professor Nicola Spurrier further provided advice today that there were no new cases in South Australia.

We had to move very quickly to close the borders to India because of the current surge in that country. We did that with great regret. We know that there are many Australian citizens who are stranded there who need to come back, and the federal government is working to bring back those on a prioritised basis at the moment, but the swift way that Australia moved to effectively close that border so quickly has significantly improved the situation.

Members opposite—all members in this chamber—would be aware that several weeks ago we were heading towards our capacity in the Tom's Court Hotel. This was of significant concern to us in South Australia. Whilst there were contingencies put in place, we did have to request the federal government to, if you like, postpone or cancel some flights to Australia to alleviate the situation. They did that. We've got a good working relationship with the federal government when it comes to the coronavirus, and the results are on the board.

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