Tuesday, 29 October 2024

Adjournment

Ingrid STITT (Western Metropolitan – Minister for Mental Health, Minister for Ageing, Minister for Multicultural Affairs) (22:01): I move:

That the house do now adjourn.

COVID-19

Georgie CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (22:01): (1207) My adjournment matter this evening is for the attention of the Minister for Health, and it is in relation to a COVID plan. I know that the federal government released their report today, which was scathing in relation to what happened around the country. No more so, though, it reminded us of the issues that we were subjected to here in Victoria: the longest locked-down city in the world, the curfews that were a captain’s call by the former Premier Daniel Andrews, the playgrounds being taped up and children locked out of schools. It was just a disgrace how these decisions were made.

I note that some of the findings from this report today state that governments were fixated on case numbers and lost sight of the broader mental health impacts of lockdowns and school closures. I could not agree with them more. I continually had to be reminded by these ridiculous tweets that went out from Daniel Andrews and Brett Sutton about doughnut days, because they were fixated on COVID numbers and trying to eliminate the virus, which could never happen. It was just an appalling public policy that went on in this state through those dark COVID years, which we are still paying for, not only in economic terms but more seriously in the mental health of children, in people who had their businesses affected and in families, who were very distressed through not being able to make contact with one another at very sad times, not able to attend funerals due to border closures between states – a whole range of things which were really very, very devastating.

In this report today there are a number of things that they do make note of. One of those is around a centre for disease control. I am very pleased that the federal government picked up on that. I must say it should have been a federal royal commission to really get to the bottom of what –

David Davis: Not a half-baked thing, although there were some good people on it.

Georgie CROZIER: You are quite right, Mr Davis, there were some good people on this, but it was half-baked. It should have been a royal commission so that we really thoroughly understood what governments got right and, importantly, what they did not get right. But nevertheless, it was a policy of the Liberals and Nationals that we wanted to really safe-proof Victoria and the nation from future pandemics by building Australia’s first dedicated infectious disease response centre. It would have gone a long way to managing these issues in a uniform way, so we did not have what happened here in Victoria, which did not happen in other states, as I said. The unilateral decisions, the autocratic way that the decisions were made and the shutdown of this Parliament were an absolute disgrace by Daniel Andrews and his Labor government. Nevertheless, the action I seek is for the minister to release the government’s plan for any future pandemic and the impacts to the widespread health and wellbeing of Victorians.