Page 3930 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 1 December 2021
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Health Act 1997 that will continue to keep the ACT community safe during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
The Public Health Amendment Bill 2021 clarifies and strengthens the operation of key enforcement mechanisms for compliance with emergency public health orders under the Public Health Act. The bill makes temporary changes to the Public Health Act that are necessary to ensure that the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic can continue to effectively address public health risks.
Unfortunately, as I speak, new waves of COVID-19 outbreaks are growing overseas. In Europe, countries are reimposing restrictions, and even lockdowns, due to the significant growth in cases as the Northern Hemisphere enters its winter months. We have also seen the recent identification and quick classification of the Omicron strain as a variant of concern by the World Health Organisation. Australia and many other countries have already renewed travel restrictions, but it has clearly been identified in many regions of the world already.
This is a timely reminder of the continued risk that COVID-19 poses to us and the ongoing relevance of changes proposed by this bill to protect the community. Thankfully, the ACT community is doing an amazing job to reduce its risk of succumbing to a similar fate in having to respond to high rates of transmission and hospitalisation, with our vaccination rate rightly lauded as world leading. But we cannot take anything for granted in our current environment.
As Ms Castley has commented on, the scrutiny committee, in its consideration of the bill, questioned whether a situation could arise whereby a person may be subject to a strict liability offence without the relevant details in the form of a direction being published on the ACT legislation register. I responded to the committee on 25 November advising that to date all directions had been published on the ACT legislation register as a matter of transparency, fairness and public information, prior to their application. I can confirm that all COVID-19 directions currently in force have been, and will continue to be, published on the ACT legislation register.
Publishing the Chief Health Officer’s COVID-19 directions affords an additional level of certainty and transparency; and the public notification of directions, coupled with significant communication efforts to ensure that they are widely known and understood, means that anyone affected has a reasonable opportunity to understand their obligations. I thank the scrutiny committee for its consideration and insightful query, and I thank the health and wellbeing committee for its consideration of whether to inquire into this bill.
Further technical legal aspects of the bill’s provisions are detailed in the explanatory statement as presented with the bill, as well as in my presentation speech. I will not repeat those or the information provided to you, Mr Assistant Speaker Davis, and Ms Castley in responding for the opposition.
The ACT has been very successful in its management of COVID-19. It is important to note that the amendments proposed in the bill are not made to support a change in the government’s approach to compliance. Our successful response has been greatly aided
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