THE Riverland’s federal Liberal MP has launched a stinging criticism of Premier Steven Marshall’s handling of last week’s statewide lockdown, calling it an “overreaction” and urging his party colleague to apologise to South Australians.
Tony Pasin says “Blind Freddy” could see the coronavirus lockdown – sensationally reversed on Friday morning – was “unnecessarily harsh” and decision makers, particularly Mr Marshall and SA Health’s Nicola Spurrier, must acknowledge their errors to reassure South Australians similar mistakes would be avoided in future.
Since the backflip was announced, Mr Marshall, Professor Spurrier and Police Commissioner Grant Stevens have defended their original decision, after it emerged the lockdown was predicated on false claims surrounding the Woodville Pizza Bar by a 36-year-old Spanish man.
“I want to know that these mistakes aren’t going to be made again and the only way I can have confidence in that is if the decision makers come out and acknowledge that this was not the right course of action,” Mr Pasin – the Member for Barker – said on Sky News’ The Kenny Report.
“And I was disappointed that they sought to maintain… that this was in fact the right approach, when I think Blind Freddy could tell you that it was an overreaction and unnecessarily harsh on South Australians.”
Mr Pasin said he remained hopeful the SA Government would “learn the lessons” of the lockdown, which has cost business millions of dollars, and find alternative ways to deal with COVID-19 clusters.
“And unless we get an acknowledgement that it was in fact an error, I’m worried we won’t learn those lessons…” he said.
“It’s important because it needs to be an acknowledgement that we’re not going to follow this similar path again.”
In addition to his frustration at the Government’s original announcement of a six-day lockdown, Mr Pasin said the SA Government had failed to learn any lessons from other states’ handling – or mishandling – of coronavirus outbreaks.
“(We) haven’t learned the lessons of the lockdown in Victoria and the management of the COVID crisis by (Premier Gladys) Berejiklian in New South Wales,” he said.
“We didn’t learn the lessons from Victoria in terms of how we manage medi-hotels and in terms of NSW… we need to operate in a way that looks to suppress the virus, not eliminate.
“If we’d taken that approach, then we wouldn’t have had 2 million South Australians in lockdown and we wouldn’t have a situation where their lives (were) thrust into the kind of inconvenience and uncertainty that I’ve experienced and my fellow South Australians have experienced.”
On Friday, Mr Marshall declared he was “absolutely fuming” about the pizza shop worker’s lying, however Mr Pasin said the man’s claims should have been better tested before Australia’s heaviest lockdown was implemented.
“I’ve got a background as a criminal lawyer and the first thing I was ever taught was never to trust anyone and test assertions,” he said.
“And I’m worried that that didn’t happen in this case, and we just rushed to a statewide lockdown.
“My point is that, that lie having been told, (it) needed to be have been tested, and there are lots of other ways to assess that evidence before you take the very drastic moves that were taken.”