asked Marshall’s office whether there was any requirement for members of his Government, including staffers, advisers and ministers themselves, to be vaccinated, particularly given jab mandates on various industry sectors, not to mention the requirement to present vax passports for entry to various public spaces and events.
The only response was thxjmtzywat “where applicable, staff are required to comply with directions like all South Australians”.
“In the absence of a direction, vaccination is voluntary but the State Government encourages everyone to get vaccinated – it’s safe, it’s free and it is the best way you can protect yourself and the ones you love from the global pandemic,” a Government spokesman said.
They declined to respond to specific questions about whether a senior staff member was unvaccinated and what that would mean for their role.
Still, it’s good to know that while the Government is stepping down unvaxxed frontline workers, they’re still doing their bit for individual freedom where they can.
We are all in the gutter…
With an election looming, if we thought we were going to see an epic clash of grand ideas and ambitious plans, the cold reality dawned overnight – as both parties used the parliamentary privilege they’ve been afforded by the Legislative Council’s final sitting week of the term to air their collection of dirt files.
If you’ve been paying attention, you’d have noticed that outgoing Treasurer Rob Lucas has been left to enthusiastically play the ‘political headkicker’ role, leaving the Premier free to be the statesman.
And so it was last night, as Lucas aired untested allegations from Maggie Dawkins – wife of former Labor deputy PM John and mother of controversial Spence preselection challenger Alice – about “party members and staffers who say they are afraid to provide information to the SA Police Joint Anti Child Exploitation Team for fear of being labelled disloyal to the party”.
“Apparently they feel that if they contact police they may spoil Labor’s chances of winning the next state and federal elections,” Dawkins wrote to Lucas last year – who seized the chance to read the letter into Hansard before parliament rose.
He also revisited an issue first aired by four years ago after an extensive investigation, about allegations of claims made concerning a “toxic” workplace in the office of Labor frontbencher Katrine Hildyard.
Lucas says whistleblowers had provided documentation to him “unofficially”, detailing claims of “abusive, insulting or offensive language or comments, unjustified criticism or complaints, excessive unreasonable workload and a variety of other issues as well”.
“To be fair, the information I was given was that the member obviously rejected some or all of the complaints that had been lodged by this staff member,” he conceded.
However, he alleged – under privilege – “a one-on-one meeting [that] ended up with Katrine yelling, screaming and throwing a chair across the office” and another exchange in which “Ms Hildyard stormed out of a meeting, locking herself in the office and a more senior staff member trying to coax Ms Hildyard out of her office for a period of time after that”.
Not to be outdone, Labor got in on the act, with retiring veteran Russell Wortley today airing claims about inappropriate behaviour by a staff member in the office of Liberal MP for Newland Richard Harvey.
“It started with a male employee of the member for Newland making rude comments that were possibly intended as a joke, but then escalated into alarming and disturbing behaviour,” Wortley told parliament.
“The male staff member would say things like, ‘That perfume smells good, it’s given me a perfume stiffy’… then the inappropriate and unwanted touching started.
“That soon progressed to grabbing their bottom with his hand. We are told this happened quite frequently, despite the male staffer being told to stop.”
He also alleged the use of Snapchat to send “a photo of his erection… with the parliamentary carpet in view.”
Lucas responded that “those issues were elevated as they should have been, they were investigated as they should have been”.
He said the alleged perpetrator’s contract “was not renewed whilst the investigation ensued”.
Harvey told “A complaint relating to a dispute between two staffers was raised and appropriately acted upon.”
One might ponder whether all of this somewhat undermines the po-faced claims yesterday that parliament’s Lower House must be recalled to preserve the sanctity of our democracy.
Still, asked about the litany of claims today, Steven Marshall said: “I’ll let the Treasurer answer that – I’ve been focussed on growing our economy.”
So at least someone is looking at the stars.
The people’s minister
On a lighter note, Environment Minister David Speirs may have missed out on his party’s deputy leadership, but he’s always considered himself a Man Of The People.
“I’m happy to have robust debate in the public arena, but I will not allow my character to be denigrated,” he declared last year, amid an online debate in which he expressed frustration about being accosted by “online trolls” before evidently deleting the entire thread.
But he wasn’t up for a debate in the public arena this week when approached with a question about his troubled sand-shifting exercise to replenish West Beach.
Speirs recently decided that a planned pumping station at Grange would not form part of the project, after local objections, instead looking at extending the sand pipeline to Largs Bay.
But Speirs was probably not expecting to field questions on the topic after a scheduled media conference in Port Lincoln this week.
As he walked away from the cameras, he was approached by a woman who asked him what was next for the project – filming him with her phone as she did so.
“I’m a resident of Grange and I was just wondering where you’re going to get the sand from now that you’ve stopped Grange being a sand collection area,” she posited.
Speirs politely began: “We’ll continue to look into that…”
And then that was that, as he quickly sauntered off.
Leaving the constituent a tad bewildered.
Vision of the exchange has been posted by Labor deputy leader Susan Close, after originally appearing on the Facebook site of outspoken entrepreneur Shane Yeend – whom readers may remember as the man behind the doomed Australian Cannabis Corporation who took former Premier Jay Weatherill to task for failing to hand his start-up the keys to the defunct Holden site for their prospective crop.
Speirs could fairly point out that multiple videos of the exchange suggest at least two punters were filming before the question was asked.
But his office provided the more fulsome reply he could also have given:
