Page 1077 - Week 04 - Thursday, 21 May 2020
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MR PARTON: Minister, what actions will you take to ensure that a more tailored approach is taken to suit the circumstances of the particular venue and this jurisdiction, given that the advice from the Prime Minister was that these restriction phases should be tailored per jurisdiction?
MS STEPHEN-SMITH: Again, I thank Mr Parton for the question. I think it has been clear all the way through that the ACT government and the ACT Chief Health Officer have been making decisions specific to the circumstances of the ACT. I note that the opposition has at times compared the decisions that the ACT has been making with the decisions that, for example, the Northern Territory has been making, a territory that is in a very different position from the ACT, that can close its borders and that has had even fewer cases, but that does not have an open border surrounded by a state that has new active cases of COVID-19 nearly every day.
We are taking our decisions in line with what is most appropriate for the ACT, as we have been the entire way through. Sometimes we have taken decisions to move ahead of other jurisdictions; sometimes we have waited to see what New South Wales, particularly, or Victoria might do and responded to that. We have done that in accordance with what is most appropriate for the ACT, taking advice from the national cabinet, the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee and our own Chief Health Officer, and then understanding what the individual circumstances of our particular public services might be and how we would need to ensure that those could operate safely in a COVID-19 environment. All of those considerations are taken into account. It is not rocket science to point out that the ACT is a unique jurisdiction that needs to make decisions in accordance with its own circumstances, and that is exactly what we have been doing throughout this pandemic.
MS LE COUTEUR: Minister, you talked about tailoring things for ACT circumstances. Have you looked at tailoring whatever the definition of “venue” is? Looking at the Hellenic Club example, if the restaurants there were a couple of hundred metres away on Bradley Street, they would clearly be separate venues, but they are in the one building. Can we have a better definition?
Ms Stephen-Smith: Is there a supplementary question here?
MS LE COUTEUR: My supplementary question is: how do you define “venues” in this context?
MS STEPHEN-SMITH: I thank Ms Le Couteur for the extended supplementary question. I have given a shout-out to the Hellenic Club over the past few weeks. They have continued to operate on a takeaway basis and they have continued to provide a service to the Woden and ACT communities. A number of clubs and larger organisations have made decisions about how they will operate in their own environment. As I said to Mr Parton in response to the first question, even if those restaurants were spread out along a strip and were able to have 10 patrons seated inside them, that is unlikely to be an economically viable proposition, as the Chief Minister has indicated.
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