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

The current total in ICU for the whole of Australia is 70. Sixty-seven of those are in New South Wales. In addition to that, 30 lives have been lost this year to COVID, and 941 in total have been lost. Every single one of those deaths is a terrible tragedy for those families. It is a terrible tragedy. But we also know that in this country we have been able to prevent and avoid more than 30,000 deaths because of the collective actions of Australians in this country and the responses that have been put in place. Overseas, people don't just know someone who might have had COVID; they know someone who has died of COVID. In too many cases, they know many people who have died of COVID. In this country, our experience has been very different. And it hasn't just been the saving of lives which has been so paramount in our thinking as a government as we have responded, as we have continued to bring Australians together, to bring the states and territories together, as we have done throughout, on over 50 occasions over the course of this pandemic. But it has also been about saving livelihoods. There have been more than 30,000 lives saved and a million Australians back in jobs since last year's COVID recession.

At the end of these lockdowns, I know one thing will happen, and that is that the Australian economy will surge back. I know that because that is exactly what occurred after the last COVID recession, after the last impact. We will see how things pan out over the months ahead, but I know this: the supports that we put in to support the Australian economy—whether it was last year through JobKeeper and the COVID supplement and the cash-flow boost and the many supplements we put in place—saw the Australian economy through and ensured that we were one of the few countries in the world that had an economy larger on the other side of the pandemic than at the beginning and more people in work than before. At the same time we had prevented, through collective actions, 30,000 Australians, at least, from perishing. That puts Australia in a league amongst very few countries in the world today. It remains now for us to complete that job as we move towards the end of this year and we see 70 per cent of our country vaccinated, hopefully 80 per cent. I want to thank Australians for, each and every hour, going out there and getting that vaccination, as we hit rates of vaccination which are up there with the world's best. As we are going through these most recent weeks—

See this speech in context