Matthew Abraham: The power of one - it’s time for SA to review its state of emergency laws after living under a police state for the best part of a year
SA has entrusted one person with too much power to declare a state of emergency in the face of the COVID pandemic, writes Matthew Abraham.
Opinion
Don't miss out on the headlines from Opinion. Followed categories will be added to My News.
From the White House to Victoria Square, the sound of pennies finally dropping is deafening.
It’s taken six long weeks, but the penny has dropped for Donald Trump, whingeing and bleating as he vacates the presidency, as pathetically and vainly as he’s done, without drawing breath, for four long years. What a giant bag of hot air.
He’s still protesting he wuz robbed, of course. He might be as nutty as a fruitcake but he isn’t stupid.
He knows he was walloped good and proper in the November 3 presidential election by 78-year-old Joe Biden, who this week became the oldest person ever to take the oath of office as US President.
And even if Trump is completely delusional and really is about as sharp as a bowling ball, to quote Foghorn Leghorn, the dime has dropped rudely on some of his most powerful, blindly loyal Republican supporters. It shouldn’t matter because he’s not our president, is he? But I still feel a profound sense of relief that the Trumps have left the house.
It’s 16,825km from the White House steps to Premier Steven Marshall’s office in the retro State Administration Centre, at 200 Victoria Square.
Pennies drop from a great height in that building every now and again and one dropped just four days into this New Year.
In one of those thinking-out-loud moments, the Premier said he was looking at how to end the emergency declaration that’s been in force in South Australia for 10 months as he’s successfully grappled with the COVID pandemic.
In case you hadn’t noticed, we’ve been in a state of emergency since March last year.
Any emergency that lasts that long isn’t an emergency, it’s a state of being. The previous record was just over four days.
Under the Emergency Management Act, parliament has handed total control of SA to the Police Commissioner Grant Stevens.
He’s done a sterling job but the fact remains his sweeping powers to impose COVID-19 restrictions intrude on our most basic human rights – the freedom to associate with family and friends, to kiss, hug and sing, to shop, work, travel and even to leave our homes. Those are powers that shouldn’t be left to a single, unelected person for more than a few days.
Now, the Premier admits the state’s Emergency Management Act is really designed for short, sharp shocks, like bushfires or floods, but “doesn’t lend itself particularly well to a pandemic”.
“We’re looking at that at the moment,” the Premier said, adding “we don’t want to have SA in a state of emergency for an extended period of time, we certainly don’t want to have it in place longer than it needs to be”.
But Premier, you have. Ten months fits the description of an “extended period of time”. You can make and have a baby in nine.
The Premier says while border restrictions are in place “if they’re not done under the Emergency Management Act they need to be done under another Act and we’re just looking at the best way to do that”.
“One thing that is for certain – after this emergency is over we will look very carefully at the Emergency Management Act in SA,” he said.
It’s said never go into a war unless you have a plan to get out, a rule ignored by most governments. But you could also say don’t declare an emergency without knowing how you’ll end it. Our elected MPs don’t need to wait until this emergency is over before nutting out a better way of handling what has turned into a modern version of a drawn-out medieval siege.
The first Major Emergency Declaration – with draconian powers including fines of up $250,000 or five years in prison – came into force on March 22 last year and has been extended by the Governor every 28 days since then.
But with four deaths, zero cases of community transmission and nobody with COVID in intensive care, how does this still qualify as a “major emergency”?
We’ve been a police state for almost a year – a very nice police state admittedly, but a police state, all the same.
Speaking of coins, bags of them, it’d be remiss not to mention yet another case of council corporate credit card fun to kick off the New Year.
As Colin James reported in The Advertiser, SA’s Ombudsman Wayne Lines has found Burnside Council guilty of maladministration for allowing managers to rack up more than $37,000 in entertainment on council credit cards.
Credit card statements show sacked Burnside chief executive Paul Deb spent more than $18,000 at restaurants, hotels, bars and cafes between 2013 and 2017, while also using ratepayers’ money to regularly wash his council-supplied Mercedes AMG C43 sports car.
His defence was that all of his credit card spending was for council business and not for personal gain and was “accepted sector and industry practice”. He argues that shelling out for meals and grog was expected by other council CEOs, elected members and “external stakeholders”.
“Any drinking sessions were for business purposes and not personal benefit,” he said. It’s a tough job, but someone has to do it I guess.
A simple sorry would have sufficed. For some, it seems, the penny never really drops.
Starick: Trump’s emergency calls for big Aussie power play
I’ve spent 30 years writing about energy changes in Australia – most of them for the worse, writes Paul Starick.
What the hell is happening in our aged care homes?
Aged care staff are being asked to study a guide on neglect. Signs to look out for include residents with untended wounds, weight loss and fear. What, they need a guide to tell them that, asks Julie Cross?