Page 1389 - Week 05 - Thursday, 18 June 2020
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The response to the COVID-19 pandemic puts demands on our community that, as Mr Rattenbury has indicated, clearly were not anticipated when this legislation was originally drafted. It is not to say no-one could have imagined there would be a global pandemic. There have been global pandemics before. But the legislation, as I said earlier, clearly was not drafted, and particularly this part of the legislation, with that in mind.
A public health emergency under the act can range from a small-scale health issue to a pandemic, and COVID-19 is different even from other pandemics that we have seen over the last 20 years or so, in that it is such a highly transmissible virus that the impact that it has on vulnerable populations, and the fact that there is no vaccine or effective treatment, means it is quite different from the pandemics that had been anticipated and planned for, which were flu pandemics, and people needed to shift their response to that. This bill will ensure that we are dedicating our resources in a fair, equitable and evidence-based way to support the community as a whole.
As Mr Rattenbury has articulated, the government has already made significant financial commitments in that regard. Prior to more recent announcements, the ACT government had already provided financial stimulus packages valued at more than $350 million that targeted areas of need and both businesses and individuals. Recent announcements have been made in relation to the hospitality and tourism sectors and, of course, just this week in relation to residential and commercial rates.
The commonwealth has also provided significant financial support for businesses, through JobKeeper payments. Although we have issues, as Minister Rattenbury does, with who has fallen through the gaps in relation to JobKeeper—and the ACT government has worked hard to try to provide support for those people—we recognise that the commonwealth has also made a very significant financial contribution. Therefore, it is prudent to ensure that our resources can continue to focus on the community as a whole, and that is what we intend to do as we move forward.
I note that today’s unemployment figures actually reflected a welcome reduction in the ACT’s unemployment, to 4.1 per cent. That is an initial sign that Canberra’s economic recovery plan and the measures that we have put in place to support our economy are working. That is supported by reductions in underemployment and in the underutilisation rate of labour. I think that is further evidence that what we have been doing has been working. We have been making our own luck in this regard.
I take the opportunity to respond quickly in relation to the issues that will be raised in Mrs Dunne’s amendment. I may speak again in the detail stage, depending on where that gets to. I want to start, in relation to that, by thanking the scrutiny committee for its comments on the bill and note that the scrutiny committee did ask for a response in relation to whether or not the government had considered the Victorian-type model of a more limited compensation scheme, where people could only apply for compensation if they considered that there were insufficient grounds for the Chief Health Officer to have made a direction or taken an action. I responded to Mrs Jones yesterday in relation to that.
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