SA backs national cabinet path out of lockdowns

As others walk away, Steven Marshall urges states to stand in lock-step with road map out of lockdown and border closures.

South Australian Premier Steven Marshall. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Mariuz

Steven Marshall has become an almost lone voice in urging the states to stand lock-step with the Commonwealth and abide by the road map out of lockdowns and border closures agreed to by national cabinet.

With other state leaders now walking away from the national cabinet plan framed around the Doherty modelling, the SA Premier said a consensus approach was crucial and that the scientific advice should unite the nation.

“We do have expert advice from Doherty, they pull it together from other experts right around the country,” Mr Marshall said.

“It’s a consensus model and it’s one that we in South Australian 100 per cent signed up to. We have listened to the experts, the evidence, the science, since day one here in SA. I think it’s put us in really good stead.”

But Mr Marshall said the country was now coming to a point where higher vaccination rates meant statewide lockdowns and whole-of-state border closures should no longer be used.

“If you are not going to have lockdowns you have to have higher vaccination rates and that’s what we are committed to in SA,” he said.

“When we get to 80 per cent which I hope is going to be in the coming months we will not be having statewide lockdowns. That’s the most punishing thing when you have got to put people in their own state into seven-day lockdowns. That will become a thing of the past.”

Mr Marshall reassured South Australians that he did not want to see any more lockdowns once the vaccination rate reached 80 per cent.

“It doesn’t mean that when we get a positive case we will just say ‘oh well, let that go through’,” he said.

“We will still do what we call test, trace, isolate and quarantine, so if you are infected we will look at those close contacts and put them into isolation.

“We don’t want it going through our state, but we do know that the transmission potential massively reduces once we get to 80 per cent of the adult population having this double dose of the vaccine.”

Mr Marshall wants a more targeted approach than statewide border bans. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Mariuz

Despite having supported the imposition of tough border closures by his Covid team headed by Police Commissioner Grant Stevens, Mr Marshall said he did not want statewide border closures to continue.

He said the caveat to the removal of statewide lockdowns was that some interstate local government areas could still be precluded from travel at times when outbreaks occurred.

However, he said this could be managed in future with a more targeted approach than the blunt force of statewide travel bans.

“We will move to a more nuanced approach where instead of looking out a whole state we will say this LGA has got a breakout or a cluster,” he said.

“When people are putting in an application to come in, we will say these LGAs are excluded. But I think we will be moving away from whole of state lockdowns. The problem with the situation as it is at the moment is you really only know the actual situation of what’s going on in a state 14 days after it’s occurred. So you have to extrapolate because this is just such a transmissible version of the disease. But as the vaccination rate goes up, it’s not as transmissible. It reduces from eight times down to one or one and a half times.”

While refusing to take potshots at other state leaders, the SA Premier said the divergent approaches being taken in WA and Queensland made for “an interesting situation”, and joked that South Australia still remained part of the Federation.

“We are still signed up to the Federation, it’s a good system,” he said.

“It comes under a bit of stress every now and again but if you look at the systems of government around the world ours stands up pretty well to most.”