If you’d like to wear a mask for your own safety, that’s your business | Caleb Bond

How amazing that it took a Labor premier to stand up for the rights of the individual against Covid rules, writes Caleb Bond.

How refreshing to see a state premier actively advocating for personal responsibility over government control.

After more than two years of lockdowns and restrictions, and businesses being sent to the wall in the name of health, Premier Peter Malinauskas has signalled that those days are over.

“It’s important that South Australians understand that we are graduating out of the situation where the government is putting restrictions on people’s lives,” Mr Malinauskas said on Thursday.

“The days of mask mandates are numbered. I certainly fit in the category of again wanting people to make decisions and using their own wit and capacity rather than the state telling them what to do.”

Premier Peter Malinauskas and health minister Chris Picton. Picture: Todd Lewis

He also flagged that compulsory Covid-19 isolation could be scrapped by the end of the month and foreshadowed the removal of masks on public transport within a week.

Bravo. The importance of Mr Malinauskas’s public statement should not be underestimated, particularly when you have people like Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews planning to keep masks on public transport – even when they won’t be compulsory on planes – because he thinks people cannot be trusted.

It sends the signal – to relevance-deprived public health officers and other premiers – that the dial must turn on our pandemic response.

It is leadership by example which, in these times, is quite refreshing.

And it puts chief public health officer Professor Nicola Spurrier – who recently suggested density limits could be brought back if Covid numbers went out of control – on notice that the premier is in charge rather than unelected bureaucrats.

How amazing that it took a Labor premier to stand up for the rights of the individual. If only there was a premier in 2020 who believed in personal freedom.

Like it or not, we have to move on. Some people will continue to contract Covid and a small number will die with it.

But, on current numbers, Covid is on the way out.

The seven-day average for cases on Thursday was about 11,100 cases a day nationwide. A month ago it was about 43,000.

There were 100 fewer people in ICU Thursday than there were a month ago – 77 across the country. You cannot, on the basis of such numbers, continue to oppress people.

The fact of the matter is that only symptomatic people get tested.

You could catch Covid at the supermarket, on the train or standing in line to buy a coffee. And yet case numbers continue to fall.

It makes no sense to mandate masks on buses but not in packed theatres.

If you’d like to wear one for your own safety, that’s your business.

The days of government control must end – and SA is lucky to have a premier who agrees.