Wednesday, 9 February 2022

Ministers statements: COVID-19 testing

Mr ANDREWS (Mulgrave—Premier) (14:08): I am very pleased to rise to update the house on the way in which we are supporting our youngest Victorians amidst the global pandemic. I was very pleased, with Minister Stitt just a couple of weekends ago, to celebrate the statewide rollout of at least 5 hours of three-year-old kinder. We know that two years of early childhood education are so much better than one. The commonwealth government see it a bit differently, but I say, respectfully, that they are wrong. Two years of childhood education are better than one. And how do you get to 15 hours? Well, you have a commitment, you work hard, you deliver it—you go 5, 10, 15. That is fantastic. Hopefully, the inherent logic of that, not the noise of those opposite but the logic of that position, will seep through to those in Canberra.

But in a global pandemic it is not just about hours of early childhood education but indeed childcare. We know how important that is. We are opening up, the economy is recovering, people are wanting to be back at work—need to be back at work—and childcare responsibilities are very important. We are in a global pandemic and the omicron variant is wildly infectious. So what have we done? Well, we have got our kids back on day one, term 1 to school and preschool. Preschool is bigger than it has ever been, and with childcare we are providing rapid antigen tests to parents, just as we are doing for primary and secondary schools and our early childhood education environments. This is about peace of mind, it is about making sure that we support families to be well, it is about limiting the number of cases and closing down chains of transmission as soon as we detect them. I see there was some criticism today, ‘Well, little kids have no symptoms, so why are you testing them?’. They have no symptoms—that is why we are testing them. Honestly, it is a good thing they are not running much, because if you wrote a book, they would not believe it, would they? We are going to keep backing families amidst this unprecedented pressure and challenge.