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RUBY:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am.

Sydney has been in lockdown for six weeks now, but the number of Covid-19 infections is continuing to rise.
While most residents are able to stay at home, sheltered from the virus, thousands of essential workers are traveling to their place of employment everyday, to keep the city turning.

They’re doctors, nurses, teachers, carers... but they’re also cooks, cleaners and factory workers. And according to the state government, they’re the people most at risk of catching and spreading Covid-19.

Today, we speak to an essential worker living in south-west Sydney, under one of the harshest lockdowns the country has ever seen, about her life, her job and what the government could be doing to help the most vulnerable.

It’s Thursday, August 5.

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RUBY:

Paloma. Hi, how are you?

PALOMA:

I'm good, thanks, how are you?

RUBY:

I’m okay, thanks. Can you tell me a bit about where you are at the moment?

PALOMA:

Yes. So I'm just in my house in Canterbury, you know, currently in lockdown.

RUBY:

And so how long has it been now in lockdown for you?

PALOMA:

This is the start of a sixth week.

Getting into almost a month and a half? It is starting to take a bit of a toll, but it's nice still being able to go off to work, even though it is a bit stressful. It's something else to do.

RUBY:

Mm so Paloma, you live in one of the local government areas in Sydney’s south-west that is, at the moment, under one of the strictest lockdowns the country has seen, where most people aren’t allowed to leave their local area. And, you’re also an essential worker. Can you tell me a little bit about that, about what it is that you do?

PALOMA:

Yeah so, I work at Target in Bankstown. Mainly, I work in the online orders department where we package and collect orders for everyone ordering things from home.

People will place their orders online and they get distributed to the different stores. In the second or third week of lockdown, you know, we were getting about a thousand orders a day, which is well above what we normally get.
It was funny to see in the first few weeks, it was very much, you know, at home gym equipment and board games and crafting for little kids, you know, people sort of trying to adjust to life at home. And, yeah, over the weeks orders really just increased quite a lot. It seems people are trying to use the time to do home redecorating, things like that.

RUBY:

Can you take me back to those first few weeks of lockdown in Sydney? It was late June, which is more than a month ago now, when those first cases of the Delta variant began to spread...

Archival Tape -- Unidentified Reporter #1:

“Sydney's eastern suburbs Coronavirus cluster has grown to 11, that includes two new cases, a woman in her 50s and a man in his 30s.”

RUBY:

And downtown Sydney and the eastern suburbs of the city, including Bondi went into lockdown.

Archival Tape -- Unidentified Reporter #2:

“What’s different this time is this Delta strain is so infectious that a person could get it within seconds.”

RUBY:

That was the city’s first lockdown since December last year I think… So did that have much of an impact on you?

PALOMA:

No. Those first few weeks were pretty much the same. You know, we sort of felt quite removed all the way out in Bankstown. We weren't really feeling the effects at all. We just sort of started wearing masks at work and taking some more precautions. But it was really when the south west Sydney outbreak started to spread that, you know, things really changed...

Archival Tape -- Unidentified Reporter #3:

“Sydney is tonight on the verge of tougher restrictions with the premier considering whether the current lockdown is enough to contain cases in our south west.”

PALOMA:

...and especially when LGA was put into a more strict lockdown.

Archival Tape -- Unidentified Reporter #4:

“Almost 1 million Sydnesiders banned from leaving their local council area, retail businesses forced to close, and construction sites shut down.”

PALOMA:

When that lockdown came into effect for the Canterbury Bankstown LGA pretty much meant you couldn't leave the LGA for work. I was lucky because I live and work in the same LGA. But, yeah, retail wasn't allowed like in stores.

Archival Tape -- Unidentified Reporter #5:

“Retail shops such as clothing, electrical and furniture are now ordered to close, except for click and collect and online…”

PALOMA:

You had to wear a mask everywhere. And the shopping centre I work in has been listed on the New South Wales Health covid site it seems like almost every day for the past few weeks. So, yeah, every time I leave my actual workplace, I feel like I'm at risk of passing someone who has it.

Archival Tape -- Unidentified Reporter #6:

“Police will launch a major operation in south western Sydney to enforce lockdown orders after New South Wales saw its highest number of new Coronavirus infections in 14 months. More than 100 extra officers will be deployed in the area, which has come under the microscope this week as the Delta Covid variant spreads through several suburbs.”

PALOMA:

And I think the biggest thing that was felt in the community was the police presence that was introduced as a way of enforcing the lockdown.

Archival Tape -- Unidentified Reporter #7:

“2 million Sydney residents are tonight experiencing the city’s toughest ever Covid restrictions, and hundreds of police have hit the streets to enforce the new rules…”

PALOMA:

I think that was sort of the most clear visual sign of what was going on.

Archival Tape -- Unidentified Reporter #8:

“Thousands of officers out asking for bonafides, checking if people are more than 5km from their homes…”

PALOMA:

That’s when things really became a lot different for us at work.

RUBY:

Mm can you tell me a bit more about that? When did you first notice the police presence?

PALOMA:

Well, when I started coming into work, when the lockdown had gone into effect, I remember coworkers telling me that police had been in earlier days fining people in the store for not wearing masks. And that day on my lunch break when I was getting a coffee and I noticed at least three police officers walking around quite casually. But still, that presence was clear why they were there. You know, they're there to keep an eye on things. And since that day, pretty much every single shift I've gone in for, I've seen police, both on the roads and walking around the shopping centre.

RUBY:

Mm and this police presence is quite intensely focused on the area of Sydney that you live in, which is a culturally diverse part of Sydney. Community leaders have expressed concern that residents have felt quite targeted by this. So how do you feel about the increased police presence; and how do you think it’s impacting people in your local community?

PALOMA:

The police presence doesn't seem that necessarily intimidating. You know, they're not walking around looking like they're ready to arrest people at the drop of a hat. But I think just the presence itself really sends a message to the community, especially a community in which the demographics are so much dominated by migrant communities. And yeah people from ethnically diverse backgrounds, especially when we know that there wasn't that response in the eastern suburbs, which is a much more affluent white area.

Yeah, I think that it really sends a message to the community that we're not trusted. And I think that lack of trust in us really makes us feel like how can we trust the government?

I think it's important to, like, listen to New South Wales Health and stay updated and follow guidelines. But I know that there's a lot of sentiment around the people I work with that the government doesn't have compassion for the situation that we're in right now.

Even if it's not the intended attitude, the attitude that the community interprets from the police presence and the actions of the government is a lack of trust in almost assuming we're going to do the wrong thing.

RUBY:

We'll be back in a moment.

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RUBY:

Paloma, the police presence in your community seems to reflect a view within the government that Covid-19 is spreading because people are ‘breaking the rules’ by refusing to stay at home. What do you think of that?

PALOMA:

The reason why the outbreak is continuing to spread in that area is because of just the high amounts of people who work in jobs like mine where you need to leave the house.

It's not that that many people are actually breaking these rules. Not only is it a feeling of the government doesn't trust us, but also that the government is almost using the outbreak in this area to score some form of political points in the sense of like policing and militant attitudes can sometimes be quite popular and that it shows the strength of the government.

Archival Tape -- Brad Hazzard:

“We’re trying damned hard at the moment to make sure that we can use every effort to suppress that virus…”

PALOMA:

They're really doing something to try and enforce these rules and stop this lockdown.

Archival Tape -- Brad Hazzard:

“But I can't tell you as health minister just how critical it is at the moment, particularly for the community in south west Sydney, Canterbury, Bankstown, Fairfield and Liverpool, to understand that your actions, your individual actions, may well determine the future of this virus in our community.”

PALOMA:

But when you're in these areas, it really just feels like you're being singled out as someone who's doing something wrong and as a community who's doing something wrong when that’s not the reality.

Archival Tape -- Brad Hazzard:

“We’re just asking people to think about how you keep your family, your friends, and your community safe? If you don’t really need to leave your house, please don’t leave your house - just don’t do it.”

PALOMA:

And I remember thinking when I saw that it was like certain people lack an understanding of how many people have to leave the house for work, and how many different forms of work are counted under that classification. Like, you know, you might not imagine going to Woolley's or Target or Aldi as an essential thing, but the world really doesn't run without the people doing those jobs.

It's nice to have this idea of essential workers as nurses and doctors who are doing such important stuff. But it is also so important to acknowledge the everyday people who are risking their own health to go out and service their community in other ways, like working in a supermarket.

RUBY:

Do you think the government is doing a good enough job in communicating to people like you, who are essential workers in this part of Sydney, the things that they can do to stay safe and the kind of support might be available?

PALOMA:

I think there's such an influx of information every time we go into lockdown that people find it really difficult to actually stay on top of it and understand whether or not they have access or not. People talk about, oh, people need to be getting tested more. But the issue is you have a lot of people who work in households where if they don't work for even two days waiting for their test results, that is a serious blow to their income; and it could put their ability to pay rent in jeopardy.

So, yeah, not also not understanding the way work is so precarious these days. If you're a casual, your ability to just take time off and feel enough confidence that you will get that support from the government - not everyone has that. So many people, especially in my local government area, the amount of people who don't have English as a first language, and they find it even more difficult to understand whether or not they'll be supported by the government if they do need to take time off.

RUBY:

Mm. And at this point, is the situation feeling indefinite to you? Like, do you feel that you can see the end of the road here or not?

PALOMA:

At this point? It's difficult to imagine a timeline. You know, of course, I have hope that we could be out of this in a month or so, but...right now, there hasn't been any significant improvement, so it does feel pretty indefinite.

RUBY:

Paloma, thank you so much for talking to me now.

PALOMA:

That's all right.

RUBY:

Good luck over the next few weeks, and hopefully things get easier.

PALOMA:

Yeah, thank you.

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Also in the news today,

Another two people in New South Wales have died after contracting Covid-19, including a man in his 20s with no underlying health conditions. Neither of the two were vaccinated.

On Wednesday New South Wales recorded 233 new local cases of Covid-19.

And the head of Australia's Covid vaccination task force says he expects people under 40 will be able to receive the Pfizer vaccine within a month.

It was also confirmed on Wednesday that cash incentives as well as lotteries were all under discussion as options for encouraging vaccination uptake.

I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am. See ya tomorrow.

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