Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

I want to thank the member for Wentworth for his work in supporting—as all of the members of this parliament have done—the work of Australia and Australians in flattening the curve. When we look beyond our borders, we see over seven million people who have been formally diagnosed with COVID-19, over 400,000 lives lost. The WHO has acknowledged that the rate of growth is accelerating in many parts of the developing world. We see in Latin America and in the Middle East, we see in eastern Europe and South Asia, of particular concern, numbers growing. Against that background, Australia's achievement, collectively, in having kept the number of cases to 7,274, on the last information I have—sadly, 102 lives lost—compares extraordinarily against that global position. We have done that by operating as one single country through the national cabinet and through the agreement and work with the states and territories but, above all else, through the partnership with the Australian people.

There have been four fundamental pillars to our approach to reducing the number of coronavirus cases in Australia. Firstly, there is the work on our borders. In the last week, Australia has had 43 cases. Thirty-four of those have been in quarantine. In other words, almost three-quarters of those cases have come from overseas and have been contained. The number of cases in the general community is down to zero to a small number on any one day. The border controls have been an immensely important part of that. The testing regime has been incredibly important. Over 500 testing clinics—1.65 million tests carried out around Australia, which has then allowed the tracing work of our public health units to try and find each and every person who has been in contact. We have the COVIDSafe app, which now has over 6¼ million downloads. Then we have the distancing and isolation, which have been so important.

We saw a challenge to this on the weekend. As the Deputy Chief Medical Officer Dr Nick Coatsworth said, as a consequence we have to 'wait and see', as a result of the mass gatherings, what the impact will be. But, overall, the direction and action of Australians in partnership has been extraordinary. We have saved lives and protected lives as a country, and all of that has allowed us to commence the path of easing restrictions and getting people back to work and getting their lives back in order.

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