Nicolle Flint (Boothby, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for International Development and the Pacific. Will the minister please update the House on how the Morrison government's Pacific Step-up is supporting our Pacific family, particularly in the face of the current global pandemic?

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

I thank the member for Boothby for her question and her advocacy for our Pacific Step-up and security and stability in our Indo-Pacific region. There's never been a more important time for Australia to stand up for our Pacific family. Managing the social, economic and health impacts of this pandemic is the most important thing we can be doing internationally for our region at the moment, and our region has done extraordinarily well.

I want to start by commending the governments of the Pacific, the people of the Pacific, for the early actions they have taken to secure their populations and ensure that most countries in our immediate region have remained COVID-free. It's a fantastic job, and they have done a great thing for their populations. Australia, too, has acted quickly to support them in this endeavour and make sure they have got the resources they need to continue. We have been in close contact with the governments since the beginning of the pandemic, with our Pacific partners in Timor-Leste, and we have, importantly, reprioritised our aid budget—a record $1.4 billion, the most spent by an Australian government in our region ever—to make sure that it is available during this time to support those governments in what they have been doing. Vitally, as the Prime Minister said just last week, we're making sure that the Pacific will be able to access life-saving vaccines through the money that we're spending. To ensure this, the Morrison government has increased its contribution to Gavi. We've also made a recent commitment of $80 million, through reprioritised money, to the Gavi Covax Advance Market Commitment, which will ensure that that access reaches Pacific countries and saves lives.

In addition, from the beginning, we set up the essential services and humanitarian corridor. This has ensured our supplies of PPE and the vaccine testing kits that we've sent through to countries have been able to keep moving when we've seen airlines close and movement stop. The countless tonnes of PPE and the 19,000 GeneXpert COVID cartridges that have been received for the Pacific has made a big difference.

Supporting the economies of the Pacific is also going to be vital for the challenges that we face coming up. That's why I'm pleased to inform the House that this morning Prime Minister Morrison conveyed to Prime Minister Sogavare of the Solomon Islands that Australia has agreed to provide further support through the Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific to the Tina River Hydropower project following a request from the Solomon Islands government. This important project is going to drive economic recovery. It's part of our commitment that we're going to make through the region to not just ensure that we are there for the health impacts but ensure that we help our partners recover.

Australians can be totally proud of the efforts of all our agencies and our government at this time and what we're doing in the Pacific. We thank our defence forces, our diplomats, our aid partners and our aid workers. We thank everyone involved in the great work we're doing throughout the Pacific and Timor Leste. We know that during this crisis and in the shared recovery we're going to face, we'll get through this as a region and we'll through this together as a family.