Page 1250 - Week 05 - Thursday, 4 June 2020
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telephone resources and through direct communication with households and businesses.
What we are going to see over the coming month, with travel restrictions easing, is a significant risk of the virus spreading from Sydney and Melbourne, where it is predominantly now—they have most of the new cases—out to other parts of the state of New South Wales and, potentially, to the ACT. So the best public health advice remains that a gradual easing of restrictions is the best way to manage the risks of increased activity in our community without compromising all of the hard work that has been put in place across this community to stop the spread of the virus.
I want to take the opportunity this afternoon to again assure Canberrans that this government will make decisions in accordance with the advice of the ACT Chief Health Officer and the guidelines set in place by the AHPPC and endorsed by the national cabinet. We will take appropriate public health control measures to keep Canberrans safe, as we have done throughout this pandemic. We will not take reckless, immature and irresponsible decisions based on the lobbying of industry associations or pointscoring efforts from the Leader of the Opposition. We simply will not. We owe it to the vulnerable in this community not to cave in to that sort of lobbying and that sort of political pot shot, seeking to create a fight for the sake of it. That is what we are witnessing.
The Leader of the Opposition is not the only politician in the world trying this on at the moment. We are watching with horror what is happening in the United States. The Leader of the Opposition—
Members interjecting—
MADAM SPEAKER: Members!
MR BARR: throughout this process has sought to pick political fights for no reason at all, other than to get himself in the media. This is another example of that.
Six and a half million people around the world have been infected by this virus. Nearly the population of this city have died. This is a serious global pandemic. It requires mature, sensible decision-making that is based on the best public health advice. That is exactly the approach that we have adopted and that we will continue to adopt.
I commend this amendment to the Assembly.
MS LE COUTEUR (Murrumbidgee) (3.23): It is good to have yet another opportunity to talk in the Assembly about the COVID crisis. I must admit that I think that the COVID committee is doing an incredibly good job; it was one of our better ideas.
I think we need to take this one quite seriously. We have had 107 cases in the ACT and three deaths; there have been 102 deaths in Australia. The figure that is probably more alarming, having just looked at it in the Sydney Morning Herald today, is that
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