Tuesday, 2 August 2022

Pandemic Declaration Accountability and Oversight Committee

Review of pandemic orders

Dr CUMMING (Western Metropolitan) (19:35): I rise today to speak to the pandemic orders and the reports that were tabled today. It is quite insane actually. I was looking back at some of the contributions I made in this house last year around the pandemic orders—some of the pandemic orders such as lockdowns and curfews and not going near a playground or a sunset. They were last year’s pandemic orders—exactly 12 months ago, when we were locked down for the sixth time in August—such as being locked down until we were mandated to have two doses and then the vaccinated economy that we were told during Christmas we absolutely needed, which ruined nearly everyone’s Christmas. I was looking back at some of the contributions that I made last year arguing about the stupidity of some of these orders, which were things like square metreage and only 10 people at a funeral.

But these pandemic orders that we have now, during the middle of winter, are almost shambolic. They do not meet the community’s expectations, and in lots of ways they are not truly representative of what the community actually wants. Currently the government will say that there are not any mandates, but it is quite clear that the vast majority out there are still mandated to have two vaccines before they can go to work. Some of the orders, as the report explains, were almost impossible to keep up with, almost impossible to understand, and created such a huge amount of mental strain that was unneeded. They could have been simplified. The health messaging could have been quite simple around washing your hands, keeping a safe distance and staying at home.

But within the printed orders we are still talking about quarantine and isolation, which we have not got right. Around the world, isolation has gone—it is virtually five days, if that, and checking your own RAT until you are healthy enough to go back into the community. Even now people do not understand, if they are COVID-positive, how to report it. Most people do not even report. They just do their own self-isolation. They do not even go through the rigmarole of reporting it, because there is no need to.

If we get to a point where we can realise that we can all live with COVID—COVID has been around forever—then we never need to actually quarantine healthy people. How about when you were quarantining for two weeks just because you crossed a border—healthy people, again. For some of these ludicrous pandemic orders or emergency orders that we have been living under for the last two years and we continue to have, when will this government let the community make their own health choices and health decisions? Why can’t they leave the community alone to understand how to work with and live with COVID? I think we have all got to that point; I believe that we have all got to that point. But for whatever reason now, people are still being denied a GP if they are not vaccinated. They are still being denied medical care or treated like a second-rate citizen if they are unvaccinated, when they are actually going to hospital for a broken leg. It has become a ludicrous situation, and I want to know when the government will stop with the messaging.

I have been told by members of my community who have travelled overseas that they love going overseas because they do not even hear the word ‘COVID’. It is only here in Australia that you are bashed over the head non-stop with the word ‘COVID’. Go overseas—I have been told that people have gone to America or to Bali or to Europe and they do not even talk about COVID, but we are bombarded here on the news every day. We cannot stop talking about it. When will this government stop talking about COVID?