Page 1695 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 7 June 2022
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We have been living under a public health emergency for an extended period of time. Although COVID-19 is still prevalent in the ACT, we acknowledge that there may not be sufficient justification for a continuing public health emergency declaration, particularly with the very high rates of vaccination in the Canberra region.
A public health response to a global pandemic necessitates a constant balancing act between protecting community interests and public health, and individual human rights. This is indeed a challenging balance. These are the kinds of balancing issues we have seen reflected through the committee inquiry. I think that, with this bill, the ACT government has struck the right balance.
One of the key points about this bill is that it is proactive. It seeks to promote efficient public health management in the circumstances where there is no longer a public health emergency. The proposals in the bill recognise that, at the conclusion of the public health emergency declaration, certain critical baseline public health measures will be required in the medium term to manage COVID-19, in particular to alleviate pressure on health systems and reduce risk to vulnerable community members. These measures include, for example, a requirement for positive cases of COVID-19 and close contacts to isolate for a specified period of time and be tested for COVID-19 before leaving isolation, and for face masks to be worn in certain high-risk settings to prevent transmission.
The bill also proposes the inclusion of new temporary powers to implement public health and social measures, including COVID-19 vaccination requirements for certain workers, and test, trace, isolate and quarantine measures to suppress or prevent the spread of COVID-19, or perhaps new variants, within the community.
The bill proposes to make ministerial and Chief Health Officer directions, apart from a vaccine direction, notifiable instruments. This promotes a higher degree of transparency of these measures while ensuring that the effectiveness of public health measures is not undermined.
The ACT is, of course, a human rights jurisdiction and, as Attorney-General, I take very seriously this obligation to develop legislation that is consistent with individual rights. The bill is compliant with the ACT Human Rights Act and incorporates a range of safeguards and other measures to ensure that all directions made under a COVID-19 management declaration are proportionate to address the risk of COVID-19. This follows extensive and robust consultation between ACT Health, the JACS human rights and scrutiny team and the Human Rights Commission. Importantly, the bill is constrained in its scope as it applies only to COVID-19 and will expire 18 months after its commencement.
It is important, of course, to compare these proposed new arrangements with the situation we have been living under in recent years under the public health emergency declaration. This bill introduces measures that will increase transparency and accountability in decision-making, which is appropriate when you are operating in a less urgent phase of the pandemic, but in a phase where there are still potentially necessary measures to be put in place.
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