Confinements, Medium-Hotels, Mask Warrants, and Trade Restrictions: Grant Stevens has spent most of the last two years struggling with decisions he never thought he should make.
Key points:
- Grant Stevens became the state coordinator at the start of the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020
- Yesterday he resigned from his role
- He is happy with the way things are going despite some difficult and controversial decisions
As State Coordinator under the South Australian Emergency Management Act, the Commissioner of Police has extraordinary powers to direct the lives of people in emergency situations such as forest fires, floods, earthquakes and, it turns out, pandemics.
For 793 days he exercised these powers while South Australia struggled with the COVID-19 crisis.
But yesterday, its powers were overturned in favor of new laws, which return much of the decision-making on COVID-19 to the current government.
Stevens said the job as a state coordinator was difficult, but he felt “privileged” to have played it.
“I was very aware that most of the decisions we made were guaranteed to upset 50 percent of the people,” he told FiveAA.
“That’s the reality of what we were doing.”
Grant Stevens (second from left) enters the Government House yesterday with Chris Picton, Peter Malinauskas and another police officer. (ABC News: Che Chorley)
While his decisions are likely to be subject to long-term review, the police commissioner does not regret the decisions he made.
Stevens said that although he had not always followed the advice of the state’s director of public health, Nicola Spurrier, the state had been well served by it.
“We trusted Nicola Spurrier’s advice and that served us very well,” he told reporters.
“I think there are a lot of examples where different states did different things and I’m not sure they did as well as we did because of those decisions.”
Nicola Spurrier became South Australia’s director of public health in 2019. (ABC News: Che Chorley)
Tough decision on Black Lives Matter protests
A decision where South Australia took a different path from other states was around the Black Lives Matter protests and marches in June 2020, following the death of George Floyd at the hands of police in the United States.
“Some people criticized the decision I made to allow the protest to take place when the rest of the South Australians had to stay apart,” Stevens told ABC Radio Adelaide.
“We could not have the hospitality industry in operation, meetings were forbidden.
“But we called for that protest to take place and it was, in my opinion, the right decision because we saw a safe and respectful protest where elsewhere we saw violence and confrontation between protesters and police, protesters. Protest against violence police.
“I think the worst result would have been for violent activity in South Australia, where police officers had to approach the protesters, and it would have been terrible for South Australia. And I’m glad it didn’t happen.”
Black Lives Matter protest in Adelaide’s Victoria Square in June 2020. (ABC News: Patrick Martin)
Focus now on recruiting more cops
With his pandemic management role now greatly reduced, Stevens said he hoped to return his focus to making changes to the South Australian police force, which was struggling to find new recruits.
“We are still fighting at SAPOL because we still have more than 100 people a day absent with COVID, and we are a challenge for people to apply for police positions and join the academy,” he said.
Stevens said there was no cause for the lack of recruitment, but speculated that officers acting as security guards and conducting border checks during the pandemic could have been a diversion.
“It’s not a unique issue for South Australia. I’m talking to my Australian counterparts and they’re all struggling with recruitment right now,” he said.
SA Health today reported 3,975 new cases of COVID-19, along with a death of a man in his 70s.
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