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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2020-07-23 Daily Xml
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Coronavirus, Health Advice

The Hon. I. PNEVMATIKOS (14:57): I have received complaints about—

The PRESIDENT: The Hon. Ms Pnevmatikos, are you asking a supplementary question?

The Hon. I. PNEVMATIKOS: Yes, I am. I have received complaints from the CALD community about translations of notices for safety and precautions for COVID that are incomprehensible, so is there any checking going on in terms of the nature of the information that is being provided to communities?

The Hon. S.G. WADE (Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:57): Could I just clarify first the nature of the communication you are referring to? This is not general public health information; it's more like directions and things?

The Hon. I. Pnevmatikos: Yes.

The Hon. S.G. WADE: Okay.

The Hon. I. Pnevmatikos: They are precaution notices, so I don't know who authors them.

The Hon. S.G. WADE: Sure.

The Hon. I. Pnevmatikos: I could provide details.

The Hon. S.G. WADE: That would be good. In answering the honourable member's question, I don't want to become the one-man Hon. Jing Lee fan club, but I am because the Hon. Jing Lee has been extraordinarily active in supporting the translation of public health information to the CALD communities.

I certainly take the honourable member's point that it's not just the public health information, it's also the follow-up. I think I was adverting to that when in the answer I talked about not just public health information on how to stay safe but basically what's expected of you in isolation. I suppose it also goes back to the Hon. Frank Pangallo's comment in terms of compliance checks on isolations.

The honourable Premier of Victoria has highlighted that more recently the spread of the virus in Victoria has been related to workplaces, but in that very early stage of the outbreak—week 1 and week 2—if you like, the first bridge from hotel quarantine to the community transmission was significantly related to the CALD community and it was significantly culturally-related in the sense that many cultural and linguistically diverse communities are very family-oriented. They have large family gatherings.

I seem to recall that the end of Ramadan may well have coincided with this period, so there were more people getting together and that provided an unwitting bridge to community transmission. As the Premier of Victoria has said since then, it is often workplaces. Tragically, it could be a meatworks, it could be aged-care facilities and I think we have also had some fast food outlets that are associated with the link too. The Premier has made the point that more recently it is workplace related.

The point I was making in the early part of my answer to the Hon. Jing Lee's question was that SA Health is trying to learn the lessons. One of the lessons we learnt very early in the worldwide pandemic is how much aged-care facilities were at risk, and we had a major focus on that in what I would call the midpoint of the first wave. As we came out of the first wave and we started to see the beginning of the second wave in Victoria, the alarm bells were rung in relation to making sure that we had done what we could in relation to CALD communities.

As I said, the Hon. Jing Lee had already been very active right through—in fact, to be frank, from February. The first cases, as you recall, came from Wuhan. There was an impact on Chinatown activity, there was concern about the health and welfare of the Chinese community and the Hon. Jing Lee was instrumental in helping us engage that community. It is not that the events in Victoria told us about a community that wasn't already on the radar, but it did remind us we needed to make sure that we didn't just put the message out there, we also needed to make sure that we identified any knowledge gaps.

The honourable member makes a very valid point and, in terms of that CALD community consultation which, as I indicated, SA Health is engaged with at the moment, I will specifically ask them could they think about what support we can provide individuals to understand isolation requests, directions and the like. One of the challenges will be—I can't remember how many languages, I think it was about 60 languages—

The Hon. J.S. Lee: There are 63.

The Hon. S.G. WADE: —63 languages that the Hon. Jing Lee helped us to translate for the core public health messages. Translating every form into 63 languages may not be practical but perhaps if we use easily understandable English—whatever the expression is—plain English and provide access—

The Hon. C.M. Scriven interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order! Please let the minister finish his answer.

The Hon. S.G. WADE: Yes, I'm glad that I provided a moment of light relief for the Hon. Clare Scriven.

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