CORONAVIRUS — SCHOOL CAMPS — SUPPORT
PACKAGE
241. Mr P.J. RUNDLE to the Premier:
I
refer to an answer provided in the Legislative Council yesterday regarding
school camps and the fact that camp operators
will not be advised by government on whether they can operate in term 2 until
the week before the term starts.
(1) How are schools and camp
operators supposed to plan for term 2 on such short notice?
(2) Is the
Premier aware that funding promised to support camp schools has not reached
many operators, putting them under financial pressure?
Mr M.
McGOWAN replied:
(1)–(2) Obviously,
on the basis of the Chief Health Officer's advice, and this was
interrogated at length, there was a decision
made that for a period of time, school camps would not be operating. The reason
behind that is at school camps, as I and probably other members recall,
there is often a group of schoolchildren living in a room—maybe eight, maybe 10, maybe 15 in the same room,
mask-less—and the prospect is that there will be a spread of
COVID amongst the children. Although it is unpleasant for school camps and the operators of school camps and unfortunate for
children to be missing out on that experience at least for some period,
I think that the logic behind that is understandable. That is the reason; the
advice is to that effect.
Obviously,
we put in place a program to provide some financial support to school camps.
From memory, it was around $3.5 million
of support for school camps so that we could provide them with a process to
assist them over this difficult period. Obviously, there have to be
rules around that; there have to be applications, assessments and so forth when we are dealing with public money. We do
not just throw public money away like the Nationals WA did last time it
was in office, when it blew the state's debt to $44 billion up from $5 billion when it arrived in office. We obviously
have more responsibility with public money than it does.
We put that scheme in place.
Obviously, we worked through the issues with the school camp operators to
achieve that outcome. Obviously, as well, in the lead-up to the second term,
which is still some period away, we will assess the situation as it stands.
That is the thing about COVID that I have tried to explain to the opposition for two years while it has been
backing Clive Palmer and undermining everything we have done: we have to
assess the situation as it goes along because we do not want to see more
parents and people out of the workplace because they become infected because
their kids bring the virus home. Is that not easily understood? Does the
opposition understand that that is what we are trying to do? We are trying to
keep people in the workplace. We are trying to stop people getting sick and to
reduce the hospitalisation and ICU levels.
We are trying to reduce the number of close contacts. That is what we are
trying to do. The opposition can come in here as it does each and every
day and undermine everything we are trying to do, but I think the public sees
through that as the opposition's strategy.
A member interjected.
The SPEAKER: That is highly disorderly and I hope that
we do not see a repeat of that.