CORONAVIRUS —
AUSTRALIAN DEFENCE FORCE PERSONNEL
581. Mr D.R. MICHAEL to the Premier:
I
refer to the Prime Minister's offer of additional Australian Defence
Force personnel to support the Western Australian government's
efforts in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. Can the Premier advise the
house whether he has responded to the Prime Minister; and, if so, can the
Premier outline to the house what has been requested by the Australian
government?
Mr M. McGOWAN
replied:
I thank the member for Balcatta for
the question. Firstly, I would like to thank all the police officers and staff
of the state government who have been dealing with COVID-19 across the state,
particularly those out in the more remote parts of Western Australia. They have
done a great job and they continue to do so.
The Prime Minister wrote to me,
maybe last week, with regard to Australian Defence Force personnel, offering
further assistance. Therefore, I wrote back to the Prime Minister and I have
requested further assistance from the commonwealth government. I will go through the areas in which we have asked for additional
assistance.
Firstly, in the
area of border patrols, the intrastate border support would be much
appreciated. It would allow us to provide additional support and ensure that
there is some relief for our police officers on the border. We have requested
24 additional ADF personnel to help patrol the checkpoints split between Eucla
and Kununurra and we have also requested additional support to patrol other
road-entry points such as the back roads between Eucla and Kununurra. That is
12 personnel with vehicles to support police on those points. In total, that is
36 ADF to assist us on the borders.
We have also
requested additional ADF personnel to support operations at the airport and at
the ports. We have asked for an additional 32 ADF personnel and two vehicles to
assist in the management of arrivals at the airport. This would include
escorting passengers to quarantine, which is obviously a pretty large
logistical exercise that we have to do every single day. Furthermore,
Australian Border Force resources could therefore be redeployed to assist Western
Australian authorities and vetting and processing both international and
domestic arrivals.
We currently have
Department of Health personnel assigned to monitor our hotel quarantine
arrangements. They are doing a great job.
They are supported by 40 current ADF personnel. We are now requesting an
additional 40 ADF personnel to assist us in managing our hotel
quarantine sites across the city.
In terms of contact tracing, there is an opportunity for us to train ADF
personnel in the area of contact tracing should it be
required. The Department of Health has trained staff before. We would like to
train a contingent of 20 ADF personnel for the purposes of contact tracing,
which would be a preparatory measure should we have an outbreak of COVID-19 in Western
Australia.
Finally, a number of COVID coordination mechanisms have been established
by Health and the WA Police Force. We believe these
mechanisms could be reinforced by Australian government support. I understand
that the State Health Incident Control Centre—otherwise known as SHICC—has
made a request for four ADF personnel. I have now requested that these
personnel be made available to support SHICC. We have also requested an
additional two ADF and two Australian Border Force personnel to assist to
support the WA Police Force's response in that regard.
It is a significant
ask of ADF personnel. We have requested from the commonwealth to back up the
state resources that are involved in dealing with COVID-19. We will go through
the relevant processes of putting in an application to the defence assistance
to the civil community, which is required, but I have written to the Prime
Minister along the lines of what I outlined
this morning. We have done some work to make sure that we got our ''ask''
correct over the course of the last week, but we are keen to take up the
commonwealth's offer of assistance and we look forward to the
commonwealth providing the support that I asked for in coming weeks.