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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2021-09-08 Daily Xml
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COVID-19 Essential Workers

Ms BEDFORD (Florey) (15:13): My question is to the Premier. What is being done to ensure that the people who clean both trucks and buses are granted essential worker status? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Ms BEDFORD: One of my constituents is involved in a cleaning business for trucks and buses. He has been unable to carry out his work because he is not considered essential, whereas the buses and trucks are considered essential. In an effort to curb COVID, it would make sense that we make sure the buses and the trucks were cleaned.

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier) (15:14): I don't follow the question. I think the member is talking about whether people are permitted to work during a period of state lockdown. Those declarations of essential workers do move around quite a bit, depending on the nature of the lockdown.

In our most recent lockdown, which was a seven-day lockdown, we were very, very tough on the types of work that could be done. There were some areas that were deemed essential, but there were many others that weren't and the reason for this is that we wanted to go hard, we wanted to go early and we wanted to lock down movement. This is a disease that is only transmitted when people move and that's why we were very keen to keep people at home.

We were aided in our most recent seven-day lockdown by the fact that it was freezing cold, raining a lot and the Olympics were on and that kept a lot of people indoors. We also had very strong public messaging that, 'Yes, you are entitled to go out for some exercise per day and you are entitled to go out and get essential items from the supermarket,' but we did say to people that if they didn't need to do that not to do that because we have seen examples in other jurisdictions of people living in lockdown exercising their 90-minute recreation time outside of their house on a daily basis, which resulted in tens of thousands of people out and, of course, we can see the consequences of the Delta strain transmitting even in that hard lockdown.

So ours was a very, very tough lockdown. That doesn't mean to say that at the next lockdown, if there is one, we would adopt that same approach. Each one is considered on its merits. You might recall the previous lockdown, which was held around the Parafield cluster, was for three days—

Mr Brown: The Peppers cluster.

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: —the Peppers cluster. That was three days and people weren't permitted to leave even for exercise because we wanted to go very hard and reduce that movement. But at other times earlier than that, we had very significant movement and the declaration of a large number of workers as essential.

I take on board the issue raised by the member for Florey. This is a disease that has significantly affected I think every single person in this state, whether it be somebody who couldn't attend a family function, was dislocated from family members for a long period of time or had a cap put in place for a wedding or a funeral. It has had a huge effect on businesses. It has had a massive effect on employment in this state. Everybody has made their sacrifices and all I can say is that those sacrifices, when we look at them cumulatively, are what has kept our state safe and our economy strong. Our focus is to minimise those restrictions but at the same time minimise the effects of this terrible, terrible disease.

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