Page 1388 - Week 05 - Thursday, 18 June 2020
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she agreed that using the Public Health Act would be more appropriate, given the nature of this emergency, being a global pandemic, and given the call-out that it gives to the Chief Health Officer as the person who should be the decision-maker in responding to the emergency.
What this bill does, effectively, is put us in the same position in relation to compensation as we would be if we had declared an emergency under the Emergencies Act, which was our other option. We chose a more appropriate act for a public health emergency, but that does not mean that every element of it is appropriate, and our view is that this particular element, the compensation measures in section 122, is not appropriate for this type of emergency. I think we have also acknowledged that the Public Health Act itself will need quite significant contemplation in relation to its emergency measures once we are through this and have an opportunity to look back.
I also respond to Mrs Dunne’s broader comments about preparedness. I think she noted that Australia has been lucky. I have said that too. It is definitely the case that Australia was lucky that we were relatively late in getting a significant number of COVID cases in our community, and most of those cases came from overseas. But this was also a case of making your own luck. I note Mrs Dunne’s comments around not thinking that we had a sense of urgency and she could not prove that we did not because we did so well. We did so well because we had a sense of urgency, not just in the ACT but nationally.
We did so well because the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee, comprising all our chief health officers across the country and the commonwealth Chief Medical Officer, and its expert committees know what they are doing. They monitor the World Health Organisation; they monitor what is going on around the world. They provided very quick advice to health ministers and to first ministers to move fast: to move fast on border closures, to move fast on quarantining arrivals and to move fast on restrictions of mass gatherings and public gatherings. It was not just luck; it was incredibly good management by the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee, the national cabinet and all state and territory governments across the country. That is the reason that we are in the very, very good situation that we are in now.
Since the pandemic began, as Mr Rattenbury has well articulated, the government has been focused on ensuring that public resources have been targeted at supporting the parts of the Canberra community that need it most. As I outlined when I tabled the bill, officials were initially of the view that we may be able to address this particular aspect of risk to the territory’s finances through administrative means. That was in line with the approach that the government had taken to the pandemic—keeping legislative changes to a minimum while ensuring that public health can be protected and services can continue. We did consider different pathways for applying a compensation framework as part of our public health response as the pandemic evolved, but the bill was developed and introduced when it became clear that the extent of the pandemic and its effect on the community meant that this bill and this amendment were necessary to ensure the territory’s ongoing ability to properly respond to the pandemic and to protect the ability of the government to continue to deliver critical services into the medium term.
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