Thursday, 19 March 2020

Ministers statements: COVID-19

Ms NEVILLE (Bellarine—Minister for Water, Minister for Police and Emergency Services) (11:21): I rise today to update the house on the emergency management arrangements in place in relation to governance and coordination around COVID-19. As early as 1 February the emergency management commissioner, as required under the legislation, appointed the health state response controller and then on 11 March established the State Control Centre in its full operation.

That is now the hub of planning, intelligence, public information and coordination across all the agencies that are involved in relation to COVID-19. This ensured that all the structures were well and truly in place prior to the state of emergency being declared. As soon as that was declared and the directives were issued by the chief health officer, Victoria Police also established their police operations centre that is now operating 24 hours, seven days a week, and feeding into the State Control Centre as per the arrangements.

The declaration and directives have then enlivened significant powers for Victoria Police to be able to enforce those directives, to be able to arrest, detain, disrupt and disperse people who may be operating against the directives on mass gatherings and also on those returning from overseas and in 14-day quarantining. At this stage it appears Victorians are doing the right thing, but it is clear that Victoria Police have the powers they need to both proactively and reactively do spot checks.

We are working with the Australian Border Force. We have 9000 people coming in through our international airport still at the moment—so, significant numbers—but unfortunately also police resources are increasingly being called to supermarkets. Just in the last couple of hours there has been a significant amount of unrest at supermarkets. Victoria Police are making arrests, and they will do that. Again we are asking Victorians to do the right thing here. We want our police out giving reassurances, not having to arrest people, but they have got the powers they need to do that.