It’s a sad day, I think, in a lot of ways for a lot of workers in the construction industry, a lot of people who have done the right thing.

Unfortunately, due to some heinous behavior and what we have seen, the government must step in and take strong action in accordance with the orders of the Chief Medical Officer of Health in order to protect the community but also to protect these workers, their co-workers. and their families.

What we are seeing is a consequence of these events is that the construction industry is effectively amplifying and spreading the virus in communities, especially in the north and west of Melbourne but also in the southeast, then again in other workplaces …

We therefore warned the industry, as you will recall, a week ago that we had to see a substantial improvement and we then made it very clear that the authorized worker status would be reviewed if it was not respected.

Since then we have seen poor compliance and other transmission sites have been identified and this simply cannot continue. We can’t just have an industry as one of the focal points, one of the biggest areas of activity of the virus spreading in the community not meeting the safety requirements for the job that we are putting in place.