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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2020-09-10 Daily Xml
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No Jab No Play

Ms BEDFORD (Florey) (15:57): Supplementary following on from your remarks, minister: their child has a diagnosed medical contraindication. The problem is the paperwork is being bogged down. The family has been onto the department and onto your office as well. The real issue is that, unless we honour the system, which is—

The SPEAKER: Order, member for Florey!

Ms BEDFORD: —these children are allowed to have an exemption and the paperwork moves fast enough for them, she can be stuck at home for weeks.

The SPEAKER: Order! Member for Florey, pursuant to the leave that was granted earlier, I note a further introduction of facts. I call the Minister for Education.

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER (Morialta—Minister for Education) (15:58): I am not intimately familiar with the individual case. There are a number of cases that have been brought to the attention of the education department and of the health department. This is actually a very difficult job for many preschool directors across South Australia, where there are children who don't necessarily have the paperwork.

The department has provided in excess of $1 million worth of extra administration support directly to preschool directors to give them enough release time to support those families that needed assistance with either paperwork for existing immunisations for which potentially the paperwork was not there, or for families that were endeavouring to seek medical exemptions, or for families that had been persuaded, as was the intent of the legislation, to vaccinate their children, potentially for the first time, and to go on a course of catch-ups, if you will, in relation to their vaccinations.

It's a very complex area, particularly for a number of those where there is no paperwork. That is what SA Health and the education department and the preschools, where there is a child in that circumstance, are working closely on. It is a complex situation where there is a family that has had a child enrolled in a preschool but there is no intent on the family's part to have the vaccinations done for non-medical reasons. That has been a challenging situation for some preschool directors.

The chief executive of the education department at my request wrote to all families in preschool services to make sure that they were reminded—and this is something that I know the Australian Education Union was also grateful for—that this was the law, that it was not the decision of the preschool director to stop their child from being able to receive a preschool program which they were already enrolled in, and to encourage those families, some of whom had identified that they would be bringing their child to preschool irrespective of the new law—that was going to put a strain on the preschool directors in that circumstance that they did not deserve.

I was very pleased that we did not have any terribly problematic incidents through that week. There is this cohort of families who are still seeking medical exemptions, effectively from the Chief Public Health Officer. The Chief Public Health Officer and her team, as I think every single member of this house is fully aware, are doing an extraordinary job for the people of South Australia—an unmatched job in the nation or indeed in the world—in a range of other challenges that they are dealing with at the moment. That is not to say that this question is not important, too, but I am going to defend a question where there may be several weeks or days—I am not sure of the circumstance—

Ms Bedford: Months.

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER: Maybe even months if that is the circumstance, as the member for Florey describes. If there is some wait in relation to that, it is certainly something that—I know a number of families have been applying for those medical exemptions. There has been, I think, the discretion of the Chief Public Health Officer to give several weeks' extension to a number of those families where there has been an identified best effort made by that family, or a realistic intent, to deliver the outcome the member for Florey describes.

The fact is that we are in a global pandemic, however, so I will give the Chief Public Health Officer a pass if it is a matter of correspondence being delayed. We will, as I said to the member for Florey, seek details about the case in question. If there is a medical reason that is of the nature that is seen as appropriate by the Chief Public Health Officer, then an exemption may be provided. Not every doctor's opinion that there is a person who is inappropriate for a vaccination is necessarily considered by the Chief Public Health Officer to be at the level that would meet the exemption. That may or may not be the circumstance here.

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