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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2020-07-02 Daily Xml
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Coronavirus,

The Hon. F. PANGALLO (15:08): Supplementary question: is the minister concerned at the allegations that have been made against those companies in Victoria, and what actions will now be taken here to ensure that the companies being used with SAPOL are carrying out their duties under the COVID-19 restrictions guidelines?

The Hon. S.G. WADE (Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (15:09): There seems to be an underlying thought in the honourable member's questions that, if it is not a public sector employee, then we cannot get a useful service from them. If that was the case, then we would have to have a government hotel. We have lots of private partners in this project, from the people who helped put up the fences to the hotel, which has done a superb job. The Pullman, both in terms of its hospitality and its support for both police and SA Health staff, has been extraordinary.

In terms of whether or not I have concerns yes, I do, of course, when I hear of a sister state like Victoria having, last week, a quadrupling of community transmissions in one week. Since then, thankfully, we haven't seen an exponential growth this week, but we have still seen figures of, I think, 64 on Tuesday, yesterday 73, today 77. Not a single case today was from hotel quarantine.

The figures from Victoria continue to be very concerning so of course, when I was hearing reports of poor processes in Victoria, I engaged both the police and SA Health staff to ask if there were lessons we could learn, what were the things we needed to do in our processes to make mandatory hotel quarantine safer and more secure, and I am assured that both SA Health and the police looked again and double-checked what they were doing. I believe our processes were significantly stronger than Victoria's from day one, and that both SA Health and SAPOL will take every opportunity for continuous improvement.

The Hon. F. PANGALLO: Can I seek a point of order, Mr President, in relation to the response I received from the minister? I wasn't casting aspersions on those companies; I was merely asking him questions about which companies were being used there. I made no assessment of their capabilities or whatever they were doing.

The PRESIDENT: That is not actually a point of order. I think we should move on. The Leader of the Opposition.

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