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

'Too little, too late'—what a joke! There has been significant investment in our health and COVID response, and it has been delivered in such a way that I think people will look back and say it has been quite extraordinary.

Let's start with the concept of 'too little'. COVID health funding has been quite extraordinary in the last 18 months. We've guaranteed funding for health and Medicare. Importantly, we introduced the telehealth measure to ensure people could see their doctors without the risk of COVID. It helped take the pressure off our PPE early in the COVID pandemic and it was a clever way of making sure that our doctors weren't getting sick. It was an absolutely brilliant stroke and it has resulted in 71 million telehealth visits. It has completely transformed medical care, and I think it will be a legacy for many years to come.

We've invested $1.5 billion in COVID related health services, including testing and tracing, respiratory clinics and telehealth. We've invested $20 billion in the vaccine rollout and to strengthen our health system in response to COVID. We've further invested a record $2.3 billion in the mental health and suicide prevention package in the budget, and that's because we understand the shadow pandemic of this COVID pandemic. We understand these rolling lockdowns have had a significant impact on Australians. There will be more headspace centres to support young Australians, Head to Health clinics for those aged over 25, and greater access to medical professionals through Medicare. I'm absolutely proud that there's going to be a headspace opening in the Higgins electorate in the coming months. But, more than that, we've increased Medicare funding from $19 billion per year in 2012-13 to $30 billion in 2020-21, going up to $33 billion in 2024-25. Bulk-billing rates were at a record high, 88.7 per cent, for the period from July 2020 to March 2021. So not only is there more funding but we're making it more affordable for patients, so that they can get the help they need, and more accessible through telehealth.

We have also delivered significant reforms to private health insurance. This has been incredibly important as people have had to face an economic downturn. More than that, the Minister for Health and Aged Care, Greg Hunt, has worked very hard to ensure agreement across the private and public health systems so that there can be movement of patients between these incredibly intertwined healthcare systems. And he prepared last year, increasing intensive care beds from 2,200 to 7,500 in case we had an outbreak that we were unable to contain and that would overwhelm our intensive care units. That preparation happened at speed, so to talk about too little, too late is a complete joke.

But let us turn to the 'too late' aspect. When we think about the vaccine preparation that our government had very early on, you would think we were on different planets. Last year, Australia entered into five separate agreements—five!—to secure more than 195 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine. That was if they were proven to be safe and effective, because of course we're not going to roll out a vaccine that's not safe and effective. The UQ investment, which was a great investment because it was going to be an Australian invention, unfortunately fell over.

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