Vince Connelly (Stirling, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I came to this place, and after having concluded my first career in the Australian Army, I worked in business as a crisis management consultant. Some friends of mine joked, when I was about to take up the role in the place: 'Vince, it will be handy to be able to deal with a crisis when you get into parliament!' I'm pleased to report that some of the principles which underpin effective crisis management have absolutely been on display by the Morrison government throughout the pandemic thus far. A principle that anyone who's been associated with managing incidents in a formal setting, whether it be in fire brigades, ambulance services, policing or other frontline emergency services, will have become familiar with the term 'PPRR'. This stands for 'preparedness, prevention, response and recovery'. Let me touch on some of those principles and how they relate to the current response.

Firstly, prevention: unfortunately in Australia, as with the rest of the world, we have not been able to succeed in becoming completely COVID free. However, there were some very early precautions which our government put in place—changes like stopping travel, initially from China, then from Italy and later from other places around the world. That made a massive difference in helping prevent the situation becoming a lot worse.

Once we've sought to prevent, we still need to maintain preparedness, and we saw some activity here as well. There was a massive ramp-up in personal protective equipment. There were investments, not just from the Commonwealth but from the states and territories as well, in our hospital systems—the people and the infrastructure that needed to be ready in case things got a lot worse. We were also very well served by the fact that we had the first balanced budget in 11 years. That got us off to a good start.

The next letter, R, is for 'respond', and we've seen, throughout, a response on a number of fronts, certainly in the health space but also economically. I don't know how many people in my electorate of Stirling have said this, but I've also heard it replicated among my colleagues in this place and in the Senate—businesses have felt such appreciation for the JobKeeper supplement and for the fact that it's now being extended. It really has been an economic lifeline. But that doesn't stand alone, and nor do we stand alone here in Australia, so we've put a great deal of focus on making sure that our neighbours in the Indo-Pacific are also being well resourced in terms of their own response and recovery, and that has lined up nicely with our Pacific step-up program.

The response has taken a number of other forms as well. One of the things I'm really pleased to see, knowing that young people have been very hard hit—in fact, people under 35 are four times more likely to either lose their job or have significantly reduced hours as a result of COVID. This is where we've seen the JobMaker Hiring Credit come into play, a fantastic incentive for businesses to reach out and hire some of those younger people and help set them up for the future. We've also invested in manufacturing—in being able to continually improve some of the manufacturing that occurs in Australia. I'm pleased to have seen support in the latest budget for critical minerals as well. This is a fantastic asset for Australia and a resource that we can exploit even further, ideally.

It's important to note, though, that government is not the sole solution to every problem, and certainly that is true with COVID as well. I'm encouraged to see a lot of community response locally, at a volunteer level, and private businesses, who have been well supported by this government, stepping up themselves. I have a couple of examples. One of my constituents, Tony Brooks, is involved with a company called SysteMedic, along with Rowan Fenn, Walter Purio and others, and these guys are using proven blockchain technology to help enable international travel in a COVID-safe way. Another example is Alcolizer. For those who have ever been pulled over and breath-tested: the guys who produce many of those units are now, with government support, moving into the space of COVID testing. They received $180,000 initially to support their own investment in testing kits and, more recently, another $150,000. They're doing well, and we're right behind them. (Time expired)