Marielle Smith (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As COVID-19 continues to send shockwaves throughout our nation, I want to stand tonight to bring to light some of the particular challenges being faced in my home state of South Australia, because, whilst on the health front we're doing pretty well in South Australia, in large part due to the work of our Chief Public Health Officer and our health department, we know that many of the economic and social consequences of this pandemic are still hitting us. These consequences are without precedent, and they're consequences which my state just simply isn't able to afford, because my state was already doing it pretty tough economically before the pandemic hit. In June we reached our highest rate of unemployment in 20 years, at 8.8 per cent. We saw a welcome drop in July, but we know that that figure really is likely to be much higher than the figures reveal. The Treasurer himself said that nationally the real unemployment rate is probably well over what the reported figures are.

As of July 2020, for the first time in our history, more than one million Australians are unemployed. Almost 346,000 are young people, at an unacceptable rate of 16.3 per cent. Many of those are in my state of South Australia. Of course, behind each one of these statistics lies a person or a family who've lost their jobs, their livelihoods and their security. Families are desperately clinging on to the hope that we'll see this turn around and that we'll see better economic and social days ahead of us soon.

Of course, there are those who are still lucky enough to be in work in my state but for whom work is extremely challenging during this pandemic. I'm thinking here of our retail staff, who have seen a 400 per cent increase in customer abuse since the start of the pandemic. That is utterly unacceptable treatment of retail workers at a time when they are working harder than ever. There is no excuse for this behaviour. There is no excuse for taking frustration out on our retail workers. They are doing their job; they are doing it well. We are all relying on them now, and what they've gone through during this pandemic has been unacceptable.

Many of our healthcare workers too have reported being verbally and physically abused by members of the public. This is on top of the stress and pressure they've been facing on the front line of our response to the pandemic. We've seen our nursing staff and doctors reach out, calling for additional PPE and raising the alarm where they feel like they don't have this. They are concerned about their security at work and concerned about their ability to do their job of protecting the people they care for and protecting all of us.

Our early childhood educators have suffered more than many during this pandemic. Along with my colleague the member for Adelaide and my friend the member for Kingston, Amanda Rishworth, the shadow minister, I recently held a forum in Adelaide with these educators. Some of the issues raised included the lack of basic and necessary PPE, and their fears about a potential second wave of the virus and whether they'd be left on the front line of it and how they could possibly deal with that without support or resources. They reported a lack of consultation from the government as it made hasty and at times radical changes to the way our early childhood sector operates and, of course, their dismay at being the only ones kicked off JobKeeper, inexplicably, as if somehow this pandemic didn't reach into the early childhood sector, when we know it was one of the places into which it reached the deepest and caused the most havoc.

All these workers, in addition to our cleaners, our truck drivers, our teachers, our police officers and everyone out there working on the front line of the pandemic are, yes, lucky to have a job. But, my goodness, what tough jobs they are at the moment and how much do they deserve our support and respect. They deserve our thanks. But they don't just deserve our thanks in words; they deserve our thanks in wages and conditions that reflect the hard and incredible work they do, not just during the times of the pandemic but all of the time. If there has ever been a moment in our history to stop and look at our essential workers and say, 'Yes, we see you. We acknowledge you. We know what you are doing and we value you. We value you in what we pay you. We value you in how we treat you at work,' it is now.

Instead, from this government, we don't see that; we see an attack on their superannuation, one of the most basic and fundamental principles of equity, equality and fairness in Australia. That's what's coming for these workers. It's a fight Labor have ahead of us. We will continue to fight for you on your super and on the way you're treated at work. We will continue to show you our thanks by fighting for you here. There are no easy solutions to this pandemic—of course there aren't—but we must support our vulnerable; we must support those supporting us. It's the only way out of this crisis. We must ensure no-one is left behind.