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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2022-05-04 Daily Xml
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Bills

South Australian Public Health (COVID-19) Amendment Bill

Introduction and First Reading

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (10:31): Obtained leave and introduced a bill for an act to amend the South Australian Public Health Act 2011. Read a first time.

Standing Orders Suspension

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (10:32): I move:

That standing orders be so far suspended as to enable the South Australian Public Health Act (COVID-19) Amendment Bill to pass through all remaining stages without delay prior to the Address in Reply being adopted.

Motion carried.

Second Reading

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (10:33): I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

The bill before the house today seeks to amend the South Australian Public Health Act 2011 to maintain important measures to manage ongoing COVID-19 transmission in the South Australian community.

The major emergency declaration under the Emergency Management Act 2004 has been in place since 22 March 2020. This is by far the longest emergency declaration in the state’s history. The major emergency has been extended via the cabinet and the Governor 28 times since then.

The current 28-day extension of the declaration ceases on 28 May 2022. The government has indicated its desire to not have further extensions of the declaration beyond 30 June 2022. This bill, with the support of the parliament, will allow for the expiry of the major emergency by ensuring that the key protections can stay in place.

Following the expiry of the declaration, it is important to ensure continuity of some baseline measures to help manage the pandemic and protect the most vulnerable members of our community. With COVID-19 transmission continuing in South Australia, there remains a need to maintain some targeted measures to monitor the incidence and prevalence of the disease and mitigate transmission.

Isolation requirements for cases will be essential into the winter months to limit transmission of COVID-19 into the South Australian community and reduce the risk of overwhelming the healthcare system. Infection prevention and control measures, including mask wearing and staff vaccination requirements, will still be important in high-risk settings, such as residential aged-care, disability and healthcare settings.

The objects of the South Australian Public Health Act 2011 are to protect individuals and communities from risks of public health. While it effectively does so for the most part, there are also limitations in that the current provisions only provide the means to effectively deal with individual cases of disease. This has served us well prior to the global pandemic but will not provide the capacity to practically manage COVID-19 at the scale required where we have seen and will continue to see thousands of cases a day for the foreseeable future.

This has led to the use of the Public Health Act having limited applicability during the course of the pandemic. This Public Health Act (COVID-19) Amendment Bill 2022 has been developed to address the current limitations of the act to deal with COVID-19, as well as provide for the ability to transition a limited number of current requirements made under the Emergency Management Act 2004 to sustain their operation once the major emergency declaration ceases.

The bill ensures that oversight of the issuing of directions requiring isolation of cases or quarantine or other mitigation measures for close contacts is by the elected government through the Governor. The government has announced its policy of utilising the Emergency Management Council of cabinet that includes key ministers, as well as the Chief Public Health Officer and the State Coordinator, who is also the police commissioner.

The bill will ensure that specific requirements for high-risk settings are retained to effectively protect more vulnerable members of the community, including mandatory vaccination, contact tracing, mask wearing and other infection control measures. This includes areas such as hospitals, health care, aged care and disability.

To highlight the key features of the bill, it establishes a new part 11A that establishes the power for the Governor, by notice in the Gazette, to issue directions imposing requirements including isolation and quarantine on people. This is only for those who have been infected with COVID-19 or who are close contacts. The provisions have been drafted so that these requirements on close contacts and people positive with COVID-19 can have appropriate application and can include the necessary requirements to be effective.

Part 11A also provides the necessary powers for authorised officers to enforce the requirements of any direction made or transitioned under the new part and allows for the expiry of a direction or a specific provision of a direction, which must be no later than six months after the commencement of the part. This ensures the new part's time-limited application. Importantly, if these requirements are needed beyond six months, the government will need to return to the parliament to consider them again.

Part 11A also disapplies provisions of the act relating to specific principles, section 14(6), (7) and (9), and Magistrates Court appeals, section 90(3), (4) and (5), where a public health emergency would need to be declared under the act. This ensures that, should a public health emergency be needed only in relation to COVID-19, these provisions of the act would not impede effective public health measures or their enforcement at scale.

Part 11A establishes transitional provisions under schedule 1 to transition any remaining directions under the Emergency Management Act to give them effect under the South Australian Public Health Act to sustain the requirements once the major emergency declaration ceases. The Department for Health and Wellbeing is currently reviewing the existing directions in force with a view to providing advice to the State Coordinator as to their ongoing maintenance at the time of transition. These will primarily relate to high-risk sectors, such as aged care, hospitals, health care and disability care.

Importantly, this bill is limited in scope and will not allow for the imposition of restrictions, such as lockdowns, hospitality restrictions and general mask-wearing provisions, except if there was a declaration of another emergency either under this act or under the Emergency Management Act. If there was the public health need for such significant restrictions again, then the declaration of a new emergency would need to be considered at that time.

Health is the number one priority of the new Malinauskas Labor government, and ensuring that we have important measures in place to respond to the transmission of COVID-19 throughout our community forms a key part of the government’s health plan. This is combined with the need to end the declaration of a major emergency and ensure that those remaining targeted public health measures transfer to a new legal framework through this parliament.

In conclusion, I want to thank again all of the incredibly hardworking public servants of all descriptions who have been involved over the past two years in the course of the pandemic and in particular I would like to thank both the State Coordinator, Commissioner Grant Stevens, and the Chief Public Health Officer, Professor Nicola Spurrier, for their incredible work, both of whom will continue to play key roles, as part of the Emergency Management Council, in guiding the state's management of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This is certainly something that has been worked on through Health and with SA Police over the past few weeks to make sure we keep these important baseline restrictions in place. It is something that I know that the police commissioner and State Coordinator, Grant Stevens, is certainly supportive of—making sure that we keep these baseline restrictions in place and that we are able to transition away from the continued use of the Emergency Management Act. I really want to put on the record once again my thanks to them for their incredible work over the past two years, and I commend the bill to the house. I seek leave to have the explanation of clauses inserted into Hansard without my reading it.

Leave granted.

EXPLANATION OF CLAUSES

Part 1—Preliminary

1—Short title

These clauses are formal.

2—Commencement

Part 2—Amendment of South Australian Public Health Act 2011

3—Insertion of Part 11A

This clause inserts a new Part in the South Australian Public Health Act 2011 as follows:

Part 11A—COVID-19 arrangements

90A—Interpretation

This section contains definitions for the purposes of the Part and also provides that powers under the Part are in addition to, and do not limit, any other power under the South Australian Public Health Act 2011.

90B—Directions

This section provides that the Governor may issue directions imposing requirements in relation to persons who have tested positive for COVID-19 and close contacts of such persons. Such directions could, for example, include directions requiring isolation or quarantine.

Directions of the Governor under this section may not come into operation, or continue to operate, if a declaration under section 23 of the Emergency Management Act 2004 in respect of the outbreak of COVID 19 within South Australia is in force (but could operate concurrently with a declaration of a public health incident or public health emergency under Part 11).

90C—Enforcement of directions

This section provides for the enforcement of directions issued under this Part and, for that purpose, empowers emergency officers to exercise any power referred to in section 25(2) of the Emergency Management Act 2004.

It will be an offence to, without reasonable excuse, refuse or fail to comply with a direction issued under this Part or a direction or requirement of an emergency officer given for the purposes of this Part. The maximum penalty for the offence for an individual will be $20,000 or imprisonment for 2 years and for a body corporate $75,000 and expiation fees for the offence will be $1,000 and $5,000 respectively.

It will also be an offence to hinder or obstruct operations carried out under, or for the purposes of, this Part. The maximum penalty for the offence will be $10,000.

This section also provides for criminal liability for directors and managers of bodies corporate guilty of an offence against the section. Each director and the manager of such a body corporate will be guilty of an offence and liable to the same penalty for the principal offence when committed by an individual unless they prove that they could not by the exercise of due diligence have prevented the commission of the offence.

This section also provides that an emergency officer may require a person who the officer reasonably suspects has committed, is committing or is about to commit, an offence against this Part to state the person's full name and usual place of residence and to produce evidence of the person's identity. A failure to immediately comply with such a requirement will be an offence with a maximum penalty of $5,000.

90D—Expiry of directions etc

This section provides that the Minister—

(a) may, by notice in the Gazette, fix a day or days, on which a direction under section 90B, or specified provisions of such a direction, will expire; and

(b) must, by notice in the Gazette, fix a day on which section 90B and all directions under that section will expire.

The day fixed by the Minister for the purposes of paragraph (b) above, to expire section 90B and all directions under that section, must be not later than 6 months after the day on which this section came into operation.

90E—Modifications of Act

This section provides that, if a public health incident or public health emergency is declared under Part 11 of the South Australian Public Health Act 2011 in respect of COVID-19, the following provisions of that Act do not apply to a direction given in relation to that emergency:

(a) section 14(6), (7) and (9);

(b) section 90(3), (4) and (5).

Schedule 1—Transitional provisions

1—Interpretation

This clause contains definitions for the purposes of the Schedule.

2—Continuation of directions

This clause provides that, on the cessation of the last relevant emergency declaration made under section 23 of the Emergency Management Act 2004 in force immediately before the commencement of this Schedule, a direction in force under section 25 of that Act continues in force as a direction under section 90B of the South Australian Public Health Act 2011 (as inserted by this Act).

This clause further provides that any approval or exemption granted under a direction continued in force under this clause also continues in force as if it had been granted under the direction as continued.

3—Emergency officers

This clause provides that a person who was an authorised officer under section 17 of the Emergency Management Act 2004 immediately before the cessation of the last relevant emergency declaration made under section 23 of that Act will, on that cessation, be taken to be appointed as an emergency officer under the South Australian Public Health Act 2011.

The SPEAKER: I am informed that the lead speaker for the opposition is the member for Frome. It is the practice of the house to allow new members to make their first speech during the Address in Reply debate. Having regard to standing order 113, members giving their first speech may speak for up to an hour. Prior to making a first speech, the Chair will usually remind the house to extend the traditional courtesies to new members of being heard in silence without interjection. There is no formal prohibition on new members making a contribution to other business prior to making their first speech. The House of Assembly practice is for new members to ask questions, and there are examples of new members giving a grievance contribution before their first speech.

The member for Frome, of course, is required to make a contribution on this occasion because of the importance of this matter, being brought on after the suspension of standing orders, and the circumstances which befall the house and particularly the member for Schubert, who is unwell with COVID, the subject of this bill. Member for Frome, please do make your contribution. I make no criticism of you, and the house makes no criticism of you in these circumstances.

Ms PRATT (Frome) (10:42): Thank you very much for making that allowance, Mr Speaker. I rise to speak on the South Australian Public Health (COVID-19) Amendment Bill 2022 and indicate that I am the lead speaker for the opposition. The bill seeks to amend the South Australian Public Health Act 2011—the Public Health Act. The opposition will be supporting the bill in the House of Assembly, reserving our right to further consider matters and raise them in the Legislative Council.

The opposition received a copy of this bill on Monday afternoon, less than two days ago. The minister only provided the second reading speech to us last night. I note that the bill was draft No. 13, prepared on 28 April 2022, yet there was no advice to the opposition that a bill was coming and, in particular, that the bill would require urgent consideration.

The bill seeks to put the management of the COVID-19 pandemic back under the South Australian Public Health Act 2011. This is not the first time during the pandemic that the act has been used. On 15 March 2020 a public health emergency in relation to the transmission of COVID-19 was declared in South Australia pursuant to section 87 of the South Australian Public Health Act 2011.

The pandemic escalated quickly. On 22 March 2020, the State Coordinator, Commissioner Grant Stevens, declared a major emergency under section 23(1) of the Emergency Management Act 2004 in respect of the outbreak of the human disease named COVID-19 within South Australia. Since that time, the major emergency declaration has been extended 28 times by the Governor. The declaration was most recently extended on 30 April 2022 for a further 28 days, and the major emergency is due to lapse on 28 May 2022.

The government does not intend to renew the declaration under the Emergency Management Act. There are currently 18 directions in place, in addition to three declarations relating to the major emergency itself. The government is putting forward this bill in anticipation of the expiration of the declaration to keep in place, under the Public Health Act, the current COVID response. In particular, the bill seeks to maintain existing directions under the Emergency Management Act. Without the bill, upon the cessation of the declaration, the current rules and, in particular, requirements for COVID-19 positive cases and close contacts would lapse. The bill allows for the COVID-19 directions under the Public Health Act to be terminated within six months.

It is important that this state maintains agility; the pandemic is not over and it is not predictable. The government and community of South Australia have constantly needed to pivot in responding to COVID-19, and we will need to do so again. South Australia continues to record thousands of positive cases every day and our active cases are over 24,000. Significantly, on the very day the government provided the opposition with this bill, the Chief Public Health Officer advised the government that two new variants of COVID-19 have been identified in South Australia. We are going into our first flu season in over three years.

The government has advised that, if new restrictions need to be imposed in the future, a new major emergency would need to be declared by the State Coordinator under the Emergency Management Act. The Minister for Health has advised that the bill is supported by the State Coordinator, Commissioner Grant Stevens, and the Chief Public Health Officer, Professor Nicola Spurrier.

On its second day in the parliament, this government has tabled this bill as an urgent bill. Let's consider the urgency. Under the Marshall government, a number of COVID bills were brought before the parliament, putting in place protections as the state prepared for the onset of COVID-19. There was an urgency to put them in place to increase the protection of public health. Without these bills, our COVID-19 response would have been impaired.

Given that there are only two sitting weeks before the major emergency declaration is due to lapse, the bill is being treated as an urgent bill. The government has advised that they will seek to have the bill pass the House of Assembly by the end of the morning session today. We have had no indication from the government as to what their plan is for the other place.

The major emergency declaration has been extended 28 times before, for one month on each occasion. The government could have extended the declaration for a 29th time. Nonetheless, the opposition believes that this bill can be considered in the time frame and intends to support the bill. However, we will take the opportunity to explore issues in committee and indicate to the government that we will seek further briefings and discussions between the houses. The opposition is determined to protect the rights of citizens, from the right to be protected from disease to the right to free movement and association.

The Public Health Act embodies a set of eight overarching principles. Under section 5, in the administration of the Public Health Act, officers are required to have regard to both the objects and the principles of the act. Section 5 provides:

5—Principles to be recognised under Act

In the administration of this Act and in seeking to further the objects of this Act, regard should be given to the principles set out in the following sections (insofar as may be relevant in the circumstances).

One of the principles is the proportionate regulation principle, which provides:

7—Proportionate regulation principle

Regulatory measures should take into account and, to the extent that is appropriate, minimise adverse impacts on business and members of the community while ensuring consistency with requirements to protect the community and to promote public health.

Public health officers are required by law to minimise adverse impacts on business and members of the community. Similarly, the participation principle speaks to individual freedoms. Section 11 provides:

11—Participation principle

Individuals and communities should be encouraged to take responsibility for their own health and, to that end, to participate in decisions about how to protect and promote their own health and the health of their communities.

It is noteworthy that the Emergency Management Act is not subject to these such principles. These provisions may provide enhanced grounds for judicial review of public health decisions. The Public Health Act also has specific appeal provisions.

The opposition is concerned that in this bill the government is proposing to limit appeal rights, for example, in the exclusion of appeals under section 95 of the act. We also question the six-month time frame for the expiry of directions. We would like to discuss the merit of a three-month time frame. The opposition will be looking closely at the enforcement provisions, which carry both imprisonment penalties and expiation fines. We want to make sure that penalties are reasonable and necessary and that they are applied equitably.

The opposition is committed to a bipartisan response to the pandemic. I look forward to further consideration of the bill in committee and in the other place to deliver the best health and other outcomes for South Australians in this pandemic.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN (Lee—Treasurer) (10:50): Can I thank the member for Frome for her contribution. It is clear that she and her colleagues in the opposition have given this important matter a lot of thought and consideration, and of course my colleague the Minister for Health looks forward to engaging on those important issues the member raised that they would like to discuss further in the committee stage of the bill.

As the minister has already said, and as the member for Frome has highlighted, this is an unusual situation, in terms of not just the haste in which this bill is being brought before the house but also the environment in which this bill is being brought to this place prior to the house hearing the Address in Reply contributions from members, including new members and including the member for Frome. We only do so, of course, because of the speed at which this issue must be dealt with.

If we were to wait for the normal course of events, where we would perhaps spend, at the very least, the remainder of this sitting week considering the Address in Reply contributions and then the following sitting week with any remaining Address in Reply contributions, and then take this bill through its normal course, we would simply not have enough time in order to give these amendments the chance to be considered, passed and come into effect. In that regard, we are grateful for the opposition's consideration and willingness to deal with the bill in this manner and also their offer of a bipartisan approach. That is gratefully received by the government.

Both the minister and the member have made the point that we have had a succession of these declarations made, and of course the community is at the point now where it is very much looking forward to the time when these declarations are not required to continue. I think it has been a great relief for a lot of members in the community to see some of the restrictions and impositions on the community gradually lifted, over the last six weeks in particular.

Importantly, this bill strikes the right balance by giving the government the capacity to maintain a level of restrictions or to ease restrictions but not re-impose restrictions or impose other restrictions. I think that is a way in which we seek to deal with this which should provide some comfort and certainty not just to the community but also to opposition and other members who are concerned about how this new regime will be used in practice.

It has been for many people an extremely challenging time. It has been for many people a debilitating time. I am sure a lot of members have had a cursory glance at SA Health's COVID dashboard. It shows not only the extraordinary number of South Australians who have been infected with COVID and had those cases reported but also the more serious cases, the ones that have required hospitalisation, including serious hospitalisation, and of course, very sadly, people who have passed away from this. Those case numbers are reflective of a very broad impact across the community.

As other members have said in previous debates, and as the minister and the member have made reference to in their contributions, we also think particularly of those members of our community who have principally been responsible for managing COVID. They are not just our health workers but also other professions, including teachers, police, transport workers, retail workers and workers within industries that have been affected most substantially by the imposition of restrictions or prohibitions on certain activities.

The isolation and the quarantine requirements, the imposition of density limits in retail and hospitality businesses, the restrictions on activities and the restrictions on travel, all have come, depending on your perspective, at varying costs to livelihoods and freedoms that we would otherwise enjoy, and they are not lightly imposed on the community, as we have debated in this place. So it is with perhaps some view to the future that people have some positivity that, if we can have a regime in place where these restrictions can continue to be gradually and appropriately withdrawn from the community and managed in a way that is not so difficult and imposing on the community, that would be gratefully received.

As the minister has pointed out, we have also fundamentally changed how the government considers and manages these issues internally. The previous government had a transition committee principally comprising the State Coordinator, the police commissioner; the Chief Public Health Officer; and key government department heads. Notably, it was to the exclusion of the Premier and other senior decision-makers, other ministers, in government.

As we got closer and closer to the state election, and the then opposition leader now Premier, the member for Croydon, made it clear that that would not be the regime a future Labor government would continue with, that was abandoned and instead a COVID-Ready Committee was established and fortunately this time included elected members, including ministers responsible to this house, so that they could be involved in decision-making. That is an important change.

What we have sought to do since the election is go back to the structures that have always been in place in South Australia. Those members opposite who have been ministers would know, for example, as they get their minister's guide to emergencies, for example, that there is effectively—I will not say a standing committee—a committee that immediately comprises the Emergency Management Committee when the state faces the sort of emergency that we would regularly be used to, usually a bushfire or a flood or some sort of natural disaster that we were otherwise not expecting, but in this case an ongoing emergency that is dealing with the pandemic.

We have gone back to that well-known, well-articulated process of dealing with these decisions, receiving advice from within all areas of the public sector and also from outside the public sector so that a considered judgement not only can be made by elected members and those who are ministers but importantly we can be held to account for them in this place. That is an important and significant change that I think has also been broadly welcomed by the community. Those people at the recent state election who have chosen to represent their views in this place are once again responsible for the decisions that affect their day-to-day lives and we can be held to account for them, and that is an important distinction.

I do not take any umbrage at this, but I also note the member's comments about how much time the government was able to give the opposition for this bill and how it would be handled. The member for Frome is absolutely spot on. This is not the first time we have had to swiftly consider legislation, but I would say this is one of the more timely ways in which a government has engaged with the opposition in dealing with this legislation.

We can recall, for example, when the Hon. Kyam Maher, then shadow attorney-general, would call the then Attorney-General—when I say that, I mean the member for Bragg, not the member for Heysen—about whether there would be any changes to this legislation. In the days towards the end of the week before a sitting week, there would be either a negative response or no response, and then as we came into the chamber on a Tuesday for the beginning of a parliamentary sitting week we would have something dropped on our lap.

I am aware that the Premier, the Minister for Health and, I also believe, the current Attorney-General have sought to engage with their counterparts as early as possible, including before this sitting week, about this prospect and have sought to engage with the opposition on how this could be managed in the most effective way. We certainly have not sought to dump it on the opposition as a fait accompli.

As I said at the beginning of my remarks, we are grateful for the consideration of the opposition. It is clear from the member for Frome's contribution that the opposition has put quite some diligence into considering these matters, thinking about those that require ventilation in this place and also those on which they want some clarification from the government. That is a very good thing.

I want to make another couple of reflections on the lingering impact in the community from the pandemic. Notwithstanding what the member for Frome points out, that the Chief Public Health Officer has been in the media in the last 24 hours pointing to further variants that are now starting to show up in South Australia—we all hope that they do not eventuate with the same force as we have seen with previous strains of the virus, of course—we would all like to think that we remain on a trajectory out of this pandemic.

In doing so, we must ensure that we remain aware of the lingering impacts on those people who have been affected by the pandemic. I am talking about those people who have caught COVID and have lingering health impacts. To varying extents, some people have got off pretty lightly with it, including some members in this place, but not only have other members of our community passed away after contracting COVID but other members of our community have very significant lingering health impacts as a result of contracting the virus. They will need to be managed.

I am also thinking about those frontline workers who have been responsible for shouldering a much heavier load than normal during the course of the last two years. I cannot imagine how unpleasant it has been for those members of the South Australian workforce generally who have had to show up to work day after day, week after week, month after month, having to go through their entire working day with a tight-fitting mask on, for example, all the while having to conduct their regular duties, some of which have become far more difficult for them because of the restrictions or the requirements that have been imposed for COVID.

We immediately think of health workers, but we also think of, as I mentioned before, police officers. We still have an issue with COVID in our schools for teachers and even students. We think of our transport workers, particularly public transport workers, taxidrivers and rideshare drivers, private bus and coach line drivers and so on. People who have been affected working at our airports, effectively losing their livelihoods for well over a year as travel restrictions have been imposed, come back to work and confront either themselves or colleagues being infected by COVID or being impacted by close contact rules, so fewer workers are having to do the same amount of work. All of this is extremely difficult on those workers. It is the same again in the retail and hospitality industries as well.

Some retail outlets have done exceedingly well over the last two years. Supermarkets, for example, have done very well as we have changed our spending habits, generally speaking, and spent more proportionately on groceries and less on other areas of discretionary spending, but other areas of retail have done it extremely tough. You only need to be a small business, main street or high street retailer, for example, to know just how crippling economic conditions have been over the last two years.

The same goes with all the different areas of the hospitality industry, whether it is a local coffee shop, a cafe serving food, a restaurant, a hotel or a small bar. All of them have been impacted really significantly. Many of them have suffered through it and many of them have continued trading, even though they basically knew they were not able to derive an income from their operations. They did it just so they could support their workers, just so they had a reason to continue paying the weekly salary of their workers. I do not say that that happened just in hospitality; I should also point out that it happened in many other areas of the small business community.

That has put extraordinary financial burdens on part of our community which quite often was already significantly geared in the first place, having made an investment in order to establish their business themselves. They have continued to do that, even after federal government support schemes such as JobKeeper were removed more than 14 months ago. Rather than get a wage subsidy so that they can pay workers who are not effectively able to productively work because there is no custom for their business, they have continued to pay them out of their own pocket.

Some of that is a function of the relationship that employers have with their workers. Some of it is a function of the fear with closed borders, internationally in particular, that if that worker leaves that business they will not be able to get another worker at all, let alone one who is as skilled or capable of doing the work. So there are very significant financial impacts that will take a long time to recover from.

I do estimate that for the hundreds of thousands of workers across South Australia who have been responsible for dealing with this pandemic, I really do wonder about the lingering mental and emotional impacts of what they have gone through over that period. The phrase that has been used by many people in the media and by public commentators is that if COVID was the earthquake, then a mental health crisis will be the tsunami afterwards. I think there is a lot in that that we need to reflect on: not just for the impacts, of course, on our health system (public and private) and its capacity to deal with that but for the mental health burden that people are shouldering and will need a lot of assistance in dealing with over the future.

Articles have been written by demographers and economic commentators about changes in working habits, where people have dedicated so much time and effort—so much of their mental and emotional and perhaps even physical resilience—to getting through the last 18 months that they will probably say they have simply had enough in working in that course of employment in the future. That is going to present not just employers but communities and their governments really significant challenges going forward.

I make those comments in the context of this bill. We hope not only that this gives us the right governance arrangement to continue easing ourselves out of restrictions and requirements on the community but that we have an appropriate process to manage that. Even if we are lucky enough to transition now out of this pandemic—and we hope that these new variants etc. do not impact us in the future in the way that others have—we have a long and what will be at times a very difficult road ahead of us in making sure that those people in the community who have been mostly impacted by this have all the support and help that they need into the future. With those comments, I conclude my remarks.

The Hon. N.F. COOK (Hurtle Vale—Minister for Human Services) (11:09): I rise to make a contribution on this really important public health amendment bill 2022. I think there is not one person in this place who has not seen the impacts and effects on our communities of the dreadful consequences of the COVID pandemic which we have seen in various iterations. It has been, for all of us, an extremely challenging time to be in a position in our communities where so many people have reached out to us for help and support with heartbreaking stories. Our office has been no different from a local community point of view. I felt very lucky to have contracted COVID—

The Hon. C.J. Picton interjecting:

The Hon. N.F. COOK: —yes, you would not stop the sentence right there, would you—after being triple-vaccinated. I am an intensive care nurse by trade, and over many decades of looking after extremely unwell people in the clinical setting I certainly had a great insight into the consequences of this awful virus and what it does, from a pathophysiological point of view, to the body of the person who contracts the virus.

I think what that did for me was to (a) give me a bit of a different lens on this and (b) also make me quite frustrated to hear the deniers and the people opposed to vaccination imparting their views on others who are easily influenced, perhaps because of their own lack of understanding of science. It is not that I do not and have not respected people's choice—after all, I am pro-choice on matters to do with one's own body—but when it comes to imparting views on others in respect of a deadly virus in a way that is misleading and has a lack of scientific rigour, I found that extremely worrying and I still do.

When I contracted COVID, thanks to the generosity of the community and perhaps my own, at times, feeling that maybe we were over this hump, I felt unwell but not to a point where I could not function to some degree. I had what felt like a mild case of a flu and managed to continue to function, but on reflection after recovery I have lost some memory of the week that I was unwell and some of the detailed conversations that I had. People would perhaps be aware that I had COVID in the week I became the Minister for Human Services, so I had begun to use my time to read many documents and briefing notes. I have had to go over them all again, many times, to absorb them. I have been a bit of a crammer in my life in terms of studying and, in that particular period, clearly, my brain was not able to operate as such.

I felt lucky I had been triple-vaccinated and did not suffer serious febrile consequences. Coffee tasted awful, which was a terrible thing for me. My husband contracted it, but my nine-year-old son did not, all in the same house. I did laugh and joke for people (and the Minister for Child Protection should close her ears) that if someone had visited the house and seen the yellow food and the self-care that my nine year old was undertaking, they would have thought it was some kind of disastrous child protection rort that was going on.

It was, 'Stay down the other end of the house,' 'Don't come past here,' 'You get your mask on,' 'Now you can come in; we've wiped the kitchen down,' all of those things. We did everything we possibly could and he did not get it, even though he is double-vaxxed, because he is not eligible for a booster at this point. He was double-vaxxed. He did not contract COVID. I still did not want him to get it and take the risk that he would be one of the people who still gets very unwell in spite of being double or triple vaccinated.

I think part of the frustration for me is that some people have been exposing themselves to COVID just so they get it over and done with, or are not worrying about the consequences of the illness. I have looked after many people throughout my clinical time, people who have suffered a similar type of virus. We know coronavirus is not new. It has been around a long time, and I have nursed people through swine flu and the bird flu period.

We started to get innovative with health so that we could give their lungs a rest. Because their lungs were no longer able to oxygenate across the membrane, clinicians and scientists started to use what was called ECMO, which is ostensibly a bypass machine: the blood comes out of the body, goes through the machine, gets all the oxygen put into it and then it is put back into the body, in the role that your lungs would normally have but because they are so damaged cannot.

That, at the bedside, became innovative, groundbreaking and life saving for a range of people. It was a demonstration of great agility in a time when the science was suddenly able to keep up with the medical need and desire. I know that through this recent and current COVID pandemic ECMO has started to become a life-saving modality in intensive care units, including our intensive care units in South Australia, in the Royal Adelaide and Flinders, and the clinicians are doing such an extraordinary job.

We talked, and other members have spoken, about some of the precautions that have had to be put in place throughout this period of COVID, in particular the personal protective equipment: the masks, the gowns, the shields, the gloves, and the need for clinicians to wear these for 12 hours, working very hard. They do not just stand and watch; they are physically doing a whole range of things, and at pace and en masse at the bedside. Often, you would have 10 or 15 clinicians required to save someone's life when it is in the balance.

We all know what it is like to wear a mask and have glasses. All these people have the masks on, the glasses and the shields; there is the heat, the hot head. I loved my job. I loved being able to be there and provide something for people that contributed towards saving a life, but I just cannot imagine wearing that PPE, the shields and all, for 12 hours or longer, because you do not leave the bedside. If someone is tipping over the edge, you stay on. I just cannot imagine what it would be like to be so hot and sweaty, with all the fogging up that happens.

For the general public under these orders—in retail, transport, disability work, a whole range of other sites where people provide close contact support and service to people—now having to wear PPE and go through that experience, it is quite difficult for them and a massive challenge. You can feel quite unwell. Even at the bedside and counters, workers have not been able to have a drink. You cannot have a drink container sitting there and then remove your PPE to take a drink safely because you cannot be certain what is going to happen to you in terms of contracting—and I welcome again an Acting Speaker to the chair.

The empathy I have for people who are subject to orders under these acts is huge, as well as the sympathy and understanding I have for people who have been going through this condition. That translates to an urgent request for people to vaccinate, to listen to the health experts and scientists and not Dr Google and, in terms of moving forward, to follow those public health alerts as we transition through a phase where, while we might not be under an emergency act, we continue to listen to the health advice.

Yes, COVID is still there, as has been rightly pointed out by several members who have spoken on this before, and there are new variants, and I know there are many people in the community who are very concerned about the new variants and how the current vaccination protects them. Well, we follow the health advice. We know that the vaccination—two doses and a booster—is gold standard. We also know there are experts in the field currently working on whether there should be more boosters and on who should get another booster, and we know that some people are getting an extra booster. I urge people to listen to the health advice. That is exactly what we, as a government, are doing.

I understand and acknowledge the statements made by the member for Frome—who I welcome to the chamber and I look forward to working with—around timing and appreciate the thought and the commentary in the member's speech. We have brought this to the chamber as fast as we can and have provided as much notice as we can, giving the time it has taken for us to get our own advice. We hope any questions will be able to be answered in a fulsome and timely way so that we can get this piece of legislation through both houses.

I understand it will likely be debated next sitting week; I do not know the exact timing, but that is generally the pattern. That will give the opposition a week in which to get answers and work together on proceeding with this piece of legislation in a timely, informed and, hopefully, by the end point, bipartisan way.

I have spoken at length about healthcare workers, and I have mentioned other workers in the community, and it would be appropriate to use this time as an opportunity to reflect on and offer support to a range of other industries. The hospitality and tourism industry has been decimated by COVID. This is no-one's fault, and it is no reason to criticise settings that have been in place. These have been absolutely essential.

If we had not had a range of measures put in place such as quarantine, mask wearing and isolation, life would have been worse for these industries. The path we have gone down over time has been one that I have worked with and supported. I think where we are getting to now, given that we have such good compliance with adult vaccination—and, as I said, I would encourage people to continue that, particularly children getting their second doses to their course of vaccinations—we need to see that.

I think it is highly appropriate that we, as an incoming government, have responded to the many people who contacted us prior to the election to talk about the confusion that reigned across the states. Having myself travelled interstate, I found myself on a tram or in a cab or somewhere and some people are wearing masks and some are not and you have to think to yourself, 'Well, is that because there are some people who are concerned about contracting the virus so they are optionally wearing masks, or is it actually a rule?'

You find yourself constantly googling, but the signage is not always right. You are following your rules as per South Australia but you are in another state wondering whether that is actually the case. I applaud the Premier and the health minister for working together with other ministers around the cabinet and the Emergency Management Council that has been put into place to make sure that we are trying as best as we can to match other states.

Of course we know that WA has been a bit special and it has been a bit different in terms of some of the border regulations and such and good on them. They are doing what is right for their community, as we need to do what is right for our community.

I do see light at the end of the tunnel. I see light at the end of the tunnel which I hope should never see again so many people like nurses who were casually employed in hospitals, for example, who were subject to being stood down because of the cancellation of so much elective surgery. If we remember back it seems like so long ago, remember all the casual nurses who were not getting any work when we were in the middle of this pandemic starting up.

Life is so very different now and I hope that we do manage to progress with good health advice, standard types of rules across different states, some certainty for hospitality and some certainty for tourism. No more should we ever see, and we should never have seen, abuse hurled at retail workers who were simply trying to ask people to put their masks on and protect each other. I hope that our community is now at a point with this, with moving forward, so that we can again be united and respectful about choices in regard to all of this.

I think it has been really difficult, a really difficult two years, although, as I said, it feels like it has been a much longer period of time. It seems to have taken forever. I would also like to use this as an opportunity to say thank you to the Chief Public Health Officer, Nicola Spurrier, and her deputies.

I met both Nicola and Emily Kirkpatrick personally and I have to say these are medical specialists. They are not comms officers, they are not comms experts, but they have been able to come out and they are engaging. You hear their voices and you want to listen to the advice; it is easy to understand. They have been able to educate an entire community about epidemiology, a complex, complex issue. So thank you to them and all their staff and thank you to Grant Stevens, our Commissioner of Police. He has done an extraordinary job and I hope that this will make life easier for him.

Mr PISONI (Unley) (11:29): Without repeating what the member for Frome as our lead speaker has raised in her contribution to this debate—and congratulations, Penny, on that contribution and your lead for the opposition in this bill—who would have thought that when we first heard of this COVID-19 virus overseas in, I think, February 2020, when some of the reports were coming in from overseas about this virus, within a month or so the South Australian cabinet would have daily cabinet meetings about how we could manage this situation that was evolving here in South Australia?

Obviously, every day there was new information coming in. It was a brand-new virus. There was no vaccine. I think the biggest difference between now and two years ago is the fact that we now have a vaccine and there are also treatments becoming available, but it does not mean that we can go on pretending that it is gone, that the peak has finished, that there will not be any more variants. We know from what we have learned as laypeople that there are always new variants of viruses and the way to stop those variants is through vaccination, not just vaccination in wealthy countries but it is very important that we have vaccinations around the world.

We have seen a world effort for these vaccinations to move all the way around the world, although there was a stage where there was competition between countries for the limited vaccination that was available. When it first became available towards the end of 2020, we saw an order prepared for Australia, for example, a reneging of that order and that order sent to another customer in Europe. That was a well-documented instance of how desperate the whole world was about this unknown virus that has changed everybody's life forever. It is certainly not over at the moment—and that is what this bill is about, of course. This bill is recognising that the COVID-19 pandemic is not over; it is just in another phase and it is about managing that phase.

There is no doubt that there were plenty of opinions in the community about the medical basis of viruses and about the suitability of the vaccine for the COVID-19 virus. We see a lot of vaccine hesitation, even though we have very high vaccination levels here in Australia, but it is hard to understand why we are not seeing a lot more children being vaccinated at the moment. We have seen a slowdown in recent times. I think I read in the paper that there were only about 1,000 kids who used the school holidays to get vaccinated to start their vaccination programs.

We know that there are tens of thousands of kids who qualify for those vaccinations. My advice to parents is to take your kids for all their vaccinations when they are infants, when they are born. We do not have things such as polio in the world anymore. We know that kids do not die from chickenpox anymore. There are so many other childhood diseases that used to see the mortality level of Western countries much higher than it is now. Of course, there are some countries that do not have the luxury of the vaccination access that we have here in Australia.

It is hard to understand why there are members of the community who are calling this vaccine experimental simply because it comes from a new mRNA base, a new technology that has been introduced into vaccines. We know that the TGA here in Australia is extremely thorough, extremely reliable and has kept Australians safe for decades with the introduction of new drugs being circulated in the community.

I find it very frustrating when those who are opposed to the vaccination programs or raise concerns about the vaccination read material that they see online. Anyone who knows how the analytics work on Google searches knows that you can have a husband and wife, for example, sitting on identical computers with identical software and they could google the same search on vaccines, or whatever it is, for the first time and they will get the same search results to choose from. But from the minute they make their first choice as to what they read, the analytics kick in and the next time they google about that their search results will be tainted towards the choices they made when they made that selection from the many things that were on the internet.

If, for example, they decided to go down a rabbit hole and read about concerns about vaccines, that will be much more dominant in a second or third search. We have seen people yelling out at crowds, 'Do your research! Do your research!' but, of course, they are relying on the analytics of internet searching and they are getting reinforcement of what they were first interested in and relying on that more and more, so they become more convinced that there is a conspiracy and that there is a concern or issue with that process.

The other thing that I think was a very first for governments around the world—and certainly we experienced it here in South Australia—was that you based your decisions on the advice that you received from the experts. We have very highly skilled medical experts in South Australia, but it is the first time they have come across such a situation. No-one around today was alive when the Spanish flu killed 50 million people in 1920. If you have a look at the history of that, it was a process of at least two years, and there is some suggestion that some strains of the modern flu today have their origins in the Spanish flu. There is no-one around today who has experienced the type of health pandemic that the world is going through with COVID-19 at the moment, so it requires decisions to be made based on the information, but that information can change when that information is new.

Again, going back to the conspiracy theorists, when a direction changes based on new information, while it is fair enough for people to ask for justification, the conspiracy theorists do not believe that justification. They think that something has been made up simply for the sake of it, not the fact that it has been a change in why a direction has been implemented. We all know—or certainly those who have been paying attention know—that we are learning more about the virus every day. That is why Professor Nicola Spurrier was able to tell us, through the genomic testing that they have done recently, there are two new variants that have made their way into South Australia from overseas.

Consequently, we need to be nimble. We need to be able to protect South Australians. We are very much about freedoms, and I am very proud that the Marshall government did not overdo the mandate process in South Australia. We rely very heavily on South Australians working collaboratively to protect ourselves and others from the pandemic and from catching the virus, of course, and that worked. We have kept our numbers very, very low.

Our economy is moving extremely well. I heard the Premier recently say that South Australia is punching above its weight in the economy—completely opposite to what he was saying before the election, of course—and that did not happen in the last month; that has been happening for years under the Marshall government. We have been punching above our weight in South Australia and that is because of our response to the pandemic, both our health response and our economic response.

There are some questions that I know the member for Frome will be asking during the committee process. I have some questions as well, so I certainly look forward to moving into the committee process. Unlike the two previous government speakers, I will not be taking the full 20 minutes. I know that there are guests who have arrived to hear some maiden speeches, so I hope we can get through this relatively quickly.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Mr Brown): The member for Hammond.

Mr PEDERICK (Hammond) (11:41): Thank you, Mr Acting Speaker. I salute your re-election to this place and the high office you are holding momentarily. I rise to speak to the South Australian Public Health (COVID-19) Amendment Bill 2022. I will not hold the house long because I know we want to get to committee and I know that we have Address in Reply speeches to be given by new members to this house and others, but I want to talk about COVID management in relation to someone representing a border community.

To say it was difficult for border communities would be an understatement, and difficult for a range of reasons, because police only manage their side of the border. There are a lot of things I learnt during the pandemic. Perhaps I should have known some of these.

The border station at Pinnaroo—I used to represent right out to the border at Pinnaroo—is a kilometre inside South Australia. These are the little intricacies you learn and there were a range of other intricacies, especially with lockdowns. There were seven biosecurity staff who lived in Murrayville across the border. There were schoolteachers and schoolchildren who lived across the border who needed to get through to Pinnaroo Primary School. There were a range of other workers. There were people who lived in Murrayville who owned and operated businesses in Pinnaroo, so it created a whole range of different scenarios, such as whether they could even come to work if the place was locked down for a week or whatever the time line was.

My boys both play for Peake in the Mallee Football League, so I am well aware of what goes on. I am a sponsor of Peake. Everyone was doing their best to make sure that Murrayville could keep playing because the season before the Mallee Football League could not function because of COVID. There were some different views on what happened towards the end of the year. This is just an example of how COVID can affect a cross-border community. There were different effects right up and down our borders with the implications of shutdowns and whatever.

We were in the finals series, both netball and football, and Murrayville was involved. On the Saturday, the finals were in Lameroo and the next day they were in Pinnaroo. During the Saturday, Victoria went into lockdown, but their people were in South Australia. I contacted my local police superintendent to see how to deal with this and the message I got back, which was absolutely valid, was, 'Well, we can't because they are Victorians. We don't have jurisdiction over them,' but essentially they should have gone home.

The story was that allegedly they did not go home; they stayed and played in the finals the next day. I think the grand final was the next week, and they were obviously locked out, so I acknowledge Murrayville's frustration. I think some people there thought that the South Australian teams were trying to lock them out, but from the conversations I had with the local footy league as the local member they were doing all they could to make sure that the finals worked to full capability, so everyone with eligible teams could play.

It created a lot of difficulties. There were talks about whether it was the netball or the football club of Murrayville suing the league, and all sorts of things. I was talking to the SANFL at high levels, I was talking to Netball South Australia at high levels, and it just gives another insight into what happened, and this would have happened right up and down the border. This is just along the Mallee, and I know it would have happened down around the Mount Gambier and Naracoorte communities for the member for Mount Gambier and the member for MacKillop, and obviously for the member for Chaffey up around the Riverland.

Aside from all those difficulties with sport, which is very important for regional communities, were the impacts on farmers. For many farmers the border is just a fence or there may not even be a fence. One farmer was that concerned about whether or not he would be able to harvest so he called me in. In the interests of what needs to happen in the house, I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.

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