Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party, Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Fairfax for that question. I want to counsel the opposition: don't knock No. 11. Australia has some great No. 11 batters. Glenn McGrath got 67 against New Zealand once. The No. 11 question is very important!

I do want to join with the member for Fairfax, with his experience in agriculture, in welcoming our Pacific family and the work they've done through this pandemic. It's been one of the most difficult years in 100 years for the globe, yet Australia and our family and friends in this region have come out of the year better than every other single region in the world today. Notwithstanding the challenges we face and notwithstanding the difficulties we've had, together, as partners, as friends, we want to join all Australians in thanking our Pacific family for what they've done to protect themselves and protect our region and for the cooperation we've had.

I do want to start by highlighting again for the House that 12 out of the 15 countries in the world that remain COVID-free are in our region. It's because of the decisions that our partner countries took early in this pandemic, as did Australia, to protect themselves and to protect each other. I want to thank every Australian who's worked here, and also abroad in our Pacific partner countries, to help our partners through this.

Many countries, understandably, in a difficult time—in an uncertain pandemic—made a difficult decision to withdraw their consular staff. Many NGOs had to withdraw their people out of countries in our region. But this government, under the leadership of the Prime Minister and the foreign minister and ourselves, made the decision to keep our consular staff in place throughout the whole pandemic. And we thank every single member of that consular staff in every single country that turned up every day and did everything they could to help other people get through it.

I want to join the acting Minister for Defence in what he said. Our defence personnel stayed in our region as well, working hard to help people get through this. I want to thank the aid and development sector. I want to thank Australian Aid, our partners who deliver these great programs all through our region, for staying in place in a very uncertain time, for continuing to deliver those essential programs.

Earlier in the week the Minister for Health came out to my electorate and visited ResMed. We had the great fortune to address 1,500 workers of ResMed on the floor. The Minister for Health spoke to them to say thank you. ResMed is an Australian startup company which is now a great global company. It is an advanced manufacturing company in Australia. They took great pride in what they did for the Australian government in producing ventilators, in producing PPE and in producing masks. I can tell this House, and everyone here will join me with this sentiment, those 1,500 workers in ResMed took the greatest pride in the fact they had produced masks and PPE to help other countries in our region as well. They beamed with pride because of the work they'd done to help other people. That's the Australian spirit. We help ourselves but we help others as well.

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