Lucy Wicks (Robertson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Health. Will the minister outline to the House how the Morrison government is continuing to ensure our health system and our citizens are well prepared to respond to the outbreak of the coronavirus?

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I appreciate the member for Robertson's interest in what is an issue of fundamental importance to Australians—probably the single topic with which Australians are most concerned at this very moment. I say that acknowledging her work in helping to establish the Gosford Health & Wellbeing Precinct and the work with the University of Newcastle.

At this moment she has raised the question of the preparedness of our health system. I mentioned earlier the work with COAG, but I now want to acknowledge and outline what has been implemented. On 21 January the Chief Medical Officer declared coronavirus to be a disease of potential human pandemic proportions, and that has framed the government's actions. We have been able to implement the national incident centre. We have brought online the national medical stockpile and made allocations from it. We have set out the work of the national trauma centre in making AUSMATs available to assist with the evacuation of Australians from Japan and from China and then their subsequent quarantining on Christmas Island and in Howard Springs. In so doing, we've also activated the work of the states and territories with the Commonwealth. In particular we've been able to establish the pandemic preparedness plan, which the Prime Minister activated after consultation with the National Security Committee last Thursday. That means that many years of preparation and then active preparation ahead of events are now being implemented. We continue to look ahead through the work of the National Security Committee.

One of the things we're also doing is helping to prepare our citizens and to outline the circumstances for travel. Travel bans have been put in place, as we know, with China and, over the weekend, with Iran. We have had upgraded travel advisories for Japan, Korea and, now this morning, Italy. There is also the request that those who have travelled to countries that are high risk and our health and medical workers self-isolate or not attend work for a period of 14 days. Those are very important steps.

We have had patients who have been diagnosed. Before they were diagnosed they self-isolated when they showed symptoms. That is the most extraordinarily responsible behaviour. It is helping to minimise the risk and spread of the condition. It has been coupled with the work of the states and territories in implementing the biosecurity arrangements and the pandemic plan. So all of these things are coming together. I want to thank all of our health and medical workers, our patients and our Australian citizens for partnering with us at this time.