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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2020-04-07 Daily Xml
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Coronavirus

Ms BEDFORD (Florey) (15:31): When we last met, we were just at the start of feeling the impact of the global SARS-CoV-2/coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic; now we are very much in it. It is vital at times such as this for governments to continue to function at all levels, and I am pleased this parliament has resumed its work today. As a crossbench member, on behalf of my colleagues on the crossbench and my electorate office staff, who are working very hard in our community, I know and I can assure the house we will all do as much as possible to aid the government in tackling this crisis.

I also want to acknowledge and thank all those who are working incredibly hard day and night in the midst of this crisis to stop the spread of this deadly disease and serve the community, whether it be all tiers of health professionals; emergency workers, including and especially the police; retail workers; truckies; aged-care workers; public servants; or civil society volunteers. We thank you for all you are doing to maintain essential services to keep us safe.

It is clear this disease is virulent, highly contagious and, for some, deadly. I am confident, with the effort and good work of everyone, we will eventually contain it and begin to relax many of the more extreme lockdown measures we are currently subject to and stabilise our workforce, businesses, communities and the economy.

Be it six months' time, as has been suggested by some, or longer, whenever it is we must be ready to rebuild and recover. So while our focus now clearly remains on the health emergency response, it is also important we start thinking about the type of society we want and how the economy might look on the other side of this crisis.

Self-evidently, we do not yet know the impact of the pandemic, and the longer it goes the deeper its impact will be. It is clear it has already upended our society in a profound way. This is more than just a blip in our lives: it is a shockwave. The one thing we must all recognise is things may not just bounce back. Leadership will be necessary to rebuild our community—good strong leadership at all levels. While it is hard to have answers when things are so uncertain, we can be using this time to start asking the questions we will need answers to when we come out the other side of these extraordinary circumstances.

How do we rebuild the role of government in an age of public alienation and a lack of faith in democracy? What must we do to rebuild a public sector that has lost so much expertise? How do we renew our health system; institutions of civil society, such as universities, unions and media; and rebuild our faith in our experts after recent constant attacks? How do we reverse the deconstruction of the welfare state? How do we take advantage of new technologies, rather than be driven by some of their disruptive forces? How can we help people if they are too quickly forced into a cashless, paperless, online society, losing control of their daily lives and autonomy?

How will a world of working from home change the way we shape our neighbourhoods and the services we all need to access, especially for our students in schools? Are there parts of our economy we should be re-regulating or even re-nationalising? How do we alleviate exposure to economic shock while maintaining our labour market mobility and productivity? Is it time for us to adopt a basic income or negative tax income? What can we do to broaden our revenue base and make the tax system fairer so we can fund the essential services, income support and social insurances our citizens expect and deserve?

These are some of the questions that have been put to me as I have been talking to the community and others more broadly and widely over the course of this crisis. I am sure other members and other South Australians will have many more questions. They are relying on us to start the debate and they also want to be part of it. It is vital we start thinking about these questions, even if we do not yet have the answers, and recognise that we will need the widest possible input into the recovery and rebuilding phase and, dare I suggest it, to start working on a new constitution.

We must invite our best minds in all the institutions of civil society into this conversation as we craft new ways of living. We are confronting a challenge of unprecedented scale in the lives of most of us, save our grandparents and elders. They faced similar adversity and came through it and now we must, too. A strong state and a strong civil society will be vital to the recovery and to ensure resilience in the face of future disasters.

Perhaps most fundamental is the simple truth we must surely now recognise: the sickness of one of us is a threat to all of us. If we cannot understand that, we must surely also understand we are more than just a collection of individuals. We are a community with collective needs that cannot operate without a sense of shared purpose and social unity. Stay at home, do not hoard, be kind and help others when you can. Eventually we will need to be prepared to let go of old debates. Already we have seen an extraordinary shift in the mood of the nation. A willingness to embrace new ideas is evident in the recent stimulus measures which abandon the costcutting ideology and trickle-down economic theories of past times.

A sense of community spirit has seen so many acts of kindness and care for the aged and disabled and those who are most vulnerable, confounding all we have begun to think about declining social values. We see a sense of endeavour as industries reappear, as those we have kept switch to new models of production, service delivery and product innovation. We may be in hibernation mode, but we already know we can do better than merely survive this pandemic. We can do better than just bounce back. We must build a better, stronger and more resilient society that will withstand all kinds of shocks in the future.

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