THE FOLLOWING ARE EXTRACTS FROM PREMIER PETER MALINAUSKAS’ SPEECH AT THE AHA | SA’S ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING - HILTON ADELAIDE.
AHA|SA as a Source of Truth Throughout the entirety of my time in positions of elected responsibility, I have enjoyed a really good working relationship with the AHA, including in my former life with Pedro (Peter Hurley) at the helm. We haven't always agreed but we've always engaged constructively. And that will be the way my government operates throughout the entirety of our term in office. That relationship ensures that we don't get things wrong in the first instance. It also ensures that if we're going to buy a fight, we know where you're coming at us from. But we don't anticipate any of that because that productive working relationship doesn’t let you do that. If there's any doubt in the room, Ian is incredibly proactive in getting in our ear. There isn't one of our ministers that he doesn't know or have the mobile number of, and he does use it. … we have found the AHA to be a very faithful, earnest source of advice in a speedy fashion, which is something you don't always get in government as well. And that's why having a relationship with industry is fundamental to the way that we operate. I believe that in government, you can't just rely on your departments or the bureaucracy. You have to have multiple sources of truth and in respect of all things hospitality, the AHA is an important source of truth.
Premier of South Australia, Peter Malinauskas.
COVID MANAGEMENT In order to achieve that end, what I did effectively within 48 hours of being sworn in, was establish a cabinet committee to run the COVID response. Now, without going into the technicality of that, what that essentially means is there are decisions that the Cabinet can make in the form of a subcommittee, the subcommittee of Cabinet meetings, it has the full powers of Cabinet. We can make decisions in Cabinet readily and quickly, sometimes not as quickly as I'd like. But we can nonetheless make them readily and quickly, which then arms the government including the police commissioner, with more options to keep things moving. And what you've seen upon the establishing of that committee was a public enunciation of my public policy objective in respect to COVID Management, which was to achieve national consistency.
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At the heart of that effort has been the motivation of thinking about yourselves and your ability to keep people at work, to try and allow people to enjoy the dignity of work, provide a family of incomes, and of course, your businesses to operate more normally. It remains a precarious situation. I don't want anyone to be under the misapprehension. There will be challenges. There may be other variants, there will be other waves in terms of case numbers. But we are going to be leading in trying to achieve a better sense of normality, as much as we can. In that first week of formal office, I made it clear … that by the 30th of June, I want the emergency management declaration over. We are on track to realize that ambition. Back to Contents
