Labor wants financial support for city business after work-from-home order

Labor’s Treasury spokesman Stephen Mullighan says city businesses should be compensated and the Premier should apologise for “ruining Christmas”.

Businesses in the CBD should be compensated after Premier Steven Marshall urged city workers to work from home for the next month to help limit rising Covid numbers, according to the Labor opposition.

Labor Treasury spokesman Stephen Mullighan said there were hundreds of millions of dollars in unallocated jobs funding in the state budget and some of that could be used to support businesses who will suffer from fewer customers in the CBD.

“It’s clear that businesses are going to be thousands of dollars out of pocket and the government is going to have to come up with something meaningful that will make a real differences to business,’’ Mr Mullighan said.

Mr Mullighan also said Mr Marshall should “apologise for ruining Christmas for tens of thousands of South Australians who found themselves separated from their family because of how the state’s reopening has been managed’’.

He said the Marshall government had not prepared the state’s health system well enough to deal with the renewed onset of the coronavirus after South Australia’s borders were reopened in November 23.

“We’ve had disaster after disaster,’’ he said. “We’ve had vaccination centres which have been closed down.

“We’ve had contact tracing that has been wound down to the extent that they are days if not weeks behind making sure South Australians know if they have been to an exposure site.

“It’s clear that Steven Marshall’s lack of preparation to reopen the state, has put South Australians in the difficult position we are now in.’’