Wednesday, 17 August 2022

Pandemic Declaration Accountability and Oversight Committee

Review of pandemic orders

Dr CUMMING (Western Metropolitan) (17:40): I rise to speak on the Review of the Pandemic (Visitors to Hospitals and Care Facilities) Orders report by the Pandemic Declaration Accountability and Oversight Committee. Now, I should not really be surprised by the findings contained in this report, but I think it just confirms what we already knew. The first finding is:

Significant visitor restrictions for hospital patients were in place between March 2020 and 22 April 2022, aside from a brief relaxing of restrictions between November 2020 and February 2021. During this time, the majority of hospital patients were not eligible to have visitors outside of seeking an exemption as the criteria for permitted visitors was narrow.

Just think about what this means. People in hospital, scared and sick, were often left to cope on their own without any support of family, of friends or of loved ones. They were not able to celebrate the births of nieces and nephews and grandchildren. They were not able to see their friends or family in their last days, even though it could have been done safely with a RAT and precautions in place.

Finding 3 in the report says:

Due to legalistic and complex language, pandemic orders have been difficult to interpret and understand. A lack of plain language guidance for the Victorian community risks orders being misinterpreted or misunderstood.

The committee has recommended that:

Summary documents should be drafted according to plain language principles, including using language equivalent to a Year 7 level and incorporating graphics where appropriate.

To me, that is just plain common sense that should have been used since day one in a crisis. Why, if you wanted people to follow the orders, wouldn’t you have made them as easy to understand as possible?

Finding 4 is possibly the worst of all, and it says:

The evolving nature of the COVID-19 pandemic, in particular the spread of the Omicron variant of the virus, required rapid changes to pandemic orders and the public health response. A range of key stakeholders such as hospitals and care facilities were not informed of major changes to pandemic orders ahead of public announcements in the media and did not receive official communication from the Victorian Government until close to when the orders were to come into effect.

So hospital and care facilities as well as other major stakeholders, such as police, were watching the daily Dans along with the rest of us to see what was going on. Why wouldn’t the government tell the hospitals, care facilities and stakeholders as soon as possible so they could actually have procedures in place? It was probably because they were too busy looking at the Premier’s social media.

Then we have finding 5:

In some instances, public statements and announcements made at Victorian Government and agency press conferences differed from the detailed changes made to pandemic orders. This led to confusion for key stakeholders and the general public when official advice received from the Victorian Government differed from that announced in the media.

So the hospitals were watching the daily Dans to find out information as they were not being notified in a timely way, and then they found the announcements were not right when the orders were published.

No wonder our health workers were exhausted when besides their work overload they constantly had to chop and change and follow the orders. No wonder all Victorians were confused.

Finally, finding 6:

The effects of the COVID‑19 pandemic itself, as well as the public health response, have contributed to Victoria’s mental health crisis. Pandemic orders which require levels of seclusion, such as isolation, quarantine and visitor restrictions, have significantly contributed to—

(Time expired)