Katie Allen (Higgins, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic Australia, along with the rest of the world, has found itself in completely uncharted territory. This is not just a health crisis. It's also causing unprecedented economic and social upheaval. The responses by governments around the world have varied quite considerably. I really want to put on record here that we as an Australian government, Australian parliament and Australian people can feel incredibly proud of the response that we have taken. Yes, it is true that every Australian has had to do things and that the health sector has been so hardworking in delivering for COVID, but you cannot do these things without a strategic plan, and that strategic plan has been delivered from the very top. It's been delivered from the Prime Minister down through the Minister for Health and through the AHPPC and national cabinet. As Australians, I think we should feel incredibly proud of our democratic processes that have supported the delivery of an outcome that Australians can hold their head high about, and this includes a number of things regarding the delivery of a strategy.

We know that, in January, Australia was facing an incredibly unknown and fast-moving situation. Australia is in the heart of the Asia-Pacific, and we knew that the Chinese outbreak was going to result in something that we needed to deal with very, very quickly—and we were on the front foot. Firstly, we had a test that was ready to go in mid-January, led by Professor Sharon Lewin, the director of the Peter Doherty Institute and a constituent of Higgins. The national cabinet and the AHPPC, led by the Prime Minister and the Minister for Health, were quick to roll out this test. In fact, the Minister for Health should be congratulated on the fine work he did in procurement, to make sure that the millions of tests that have been available for Australians have been delivered by the Morrison government to the states and territories so that they can provide the services required for testing. So we delivered testing.

The second thing that our government has done has been to make sure that masks and PPE equipment were available at the height of the crisis and then throughout the crisis. I have to say that the procurement that was required at the international level will come out in stories to come. I know some of the behind-the-scenes stories about how procurement was a very difficult thing to do when the world was pivoting to the acquirement of masks and gowns at speed. Millions of PPE equipment has been distributed to the states and territories to keep our healthcare workers safe and to keep Australians safe.

We've also delivered on intensive care ventilator beds. When this crisis was coming at us at speed we had 2,200 ventilator beds, and we ensured that there were 7,500 ready if there was a problem that was going to result in an outbreak like we've seen in other parts of the world—outbreaks that we've seen in other parts of the world that haven't been seen here in Australia.

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