Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

The decisions that all premiers take across the country in relation to lockdowns are difficult decisions, and, over the course of this last 18 months, right across the country, the premiers, chief ministers and I have worked together to ensure that in this country we have one of the lowest rates of death as a result of COVID of any country in the world. And despite the fact that we continue to see those fatalities—and they are dreadfully, dreadfully tragic, and no-one in this House would think otherwise—the fact is that I commend the work that is being done by governments around the country and by state premiers, chief ministers and those doing their jobs every day, as indeed it is ours to do our job, working together to save lives and to save livelihoods.

It is true that, on many occasions, the New South Wales government took decisions not to lock down and they were able to contain those outbreaks.

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