Dave Sharma (Wentworth, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome this opportunity to talk about the issues that matter during COVID-19 and I welcome this matter of public importance. I've been a little surprised by the interventions of those opposite, who have seemed to want to talk about a lot of issues that don't matter such as the relative performance of the Queensland Labor government and whether the Daniel Andrews government should or should not be subject to legitimate scrutiny and criticism for their own failures during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. But I was reminded of the words of the Leader of the Opposition last week in his budget reply speech. He said:

Amid all the chaos and hardship that has shaken our world in 2020—there is nowhere else you'd rather be.

I think those are very true words. Amid all the chaos and hardship that has shaken our world in 2020, there is nowhere else other than Australia where you'd rather be.

The first and foremost duty of any Australian government is to keep its citizens safe and protect them from harm. Undoubtedly the biggest threat to Australia this year, the biggest threat to the world this year, has been the COVID-19 pandemic. It has threatened the lives and the livelihoods of people all around the world. In terms of its impact on health, there have been upwards of 30 million cases worldwide, with upwards of one million lives lost, and no-one has been immune from it. We've seen world leaders, from the President of Brazil to the Prime Minister of Britain and the President of the US, struck with COVID-19. In this year alone COVID-19 has killed more people than malaria has, more people than HIV/AIDS has and more people than suicide has, so anyone who downplays the lethality and seriousness of this disease is not only wrong but dangerous. They are encouraging complacency where none is warranted.

The economic shock of COVID-19 has been equally profound. It has been the biggest economic shock to the globe since the Second World War. The IMF expects the global economy to contract by 4.5 per cent through this year. That is compared to a contraction of 0.1 per cent during the GFC, so we're talking about a shock that is 45 times bigger than the global financial crisis. The IMF expects economies to contract: the US by around four to five per cent, Japan by five per cent, the European Union by about eight per cent, UK by 10 per cent and New Zealand by 13 per cent. In fact, the only major economy that is likely to grow through 2020 is China's.

Australia has not escaped unscathed. We've had 905 deaths here—every one of them a tragedy in their own sense. We've had 27,400 cases. Our economy contracted by seven per cent in the second quarter. Many jobs have been lost. Many businesses have suffered or been forced to close. And there has been a lot of mental hardship caused by the social isolation and dislocation it has ensured. But the damage done to Australia has been much less than other parts of the world because of the laser-like focus that we have brought on the issues that matter during this complicated and unprecedented pandemic: protecting the health of Australians, cushioning the blow to the economy and preparing our economy for recovery.

We have protected the health of Australians. The death rate in Australia is around 33 per million. In France it's 14 times that. In the United States it's 17 times that. In the United Kingdom it's 18 times that. In Spain it's 19 times that. Our early border restrictions helped us stop the entry of the virus. Our testing regime, having done over 7.7 million tests, is one of the best in the world. We invested heavily and early in things like ICU capacity, ventilators, personal protective equipment, telehealth testing and contact tracing regimes. In total we've had a health response of more than $16.5 billion. Here, in particular, we should pay tribute to all those health workers and frontline workers in critical services, who've been so integral to the effectiveness of this response in Australia. As the Medical Journal of Australia published on research just a few weeks ago, more than 16,000 people would have died in Australia if our outbreak was as widespread as that in the UK—more than 16,000 people.

We have also cushioned the economic blow of this virus. Over 1.3 million people who lost their jobs or had their hours reduced during the crisis, over half are now back at work. Programs such as JobKeeper have helped over 3½ million Australians, whilst other measures such as JobSeeker, early access to superannuation, coronavirus supplements and pension supplements have helped households. Treasury estimates that unemployment would have reached 12 per cent without government intervention. Instead, it is now expected to peak at eight per cent in the December quarter. There is a long way to go, but we have been able to do all this because we had repaired the budget and could proceed from a position of fiscal strength.

We're also building the economic future. The budget contained the important $1.9 billion investment package in future technologies around clean energy and the $1.3 billion Modern Manufacturing Initiative. The government has focused relentlessly on the issues that matter during this pandemic, and that has shown in the results.

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