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

The guidelines that were put in place were designed to provide incentives and they were designed to provide direction, but they were also designed to provide the flexibility so that no workplace would suffer a shortage. That was designed in conjunction with the sector and in conjunction with consultation right across the country.

Whilst there is a very clear direction, under medical expert guidance one of the most important things that must happen is to make sure that there are always workforce members available. We put in place incentives, we put in place additional payments and we put in place a surge workforce. In fact, there are four elements of surge workforce which we put in place: (1) on 11 March we provided surge workforce with $101 million; (2) on 13 March we had the public hospitals agreement to provide for surge workforce; (3) on 31 March we had the private hospitals agreement, which provides for surge workforce; and (4) in April we also had the testing agreement to provide for the testing within facilities. All of those elements come together—

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