Monique Ryan (Kooyong, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It was an honour to be part of the Standing Committee on Health, Aged Care and Sport's six-month-long investigation into long COVID. This significant work established a framework for a national response to this serious concern, but we still have much to do.

More than 90 per cent of Australians have now experienced COVID infection. Because most were immunised by the time that we got it and the most dominant strain during the biggest outbreaks was omicron, most of us were sick for no more than a few days, and we generally then recovered quickly with a sense of relief that it had been and gone.

But for many people COVID has not gone. The symptoms have persisted for more than three months, and those people have the disorder now known as long COVID. It has more than 200 symptoms. We heard many descriptions of individuals' difficult experiences of long COVID. We heard of persisting cough, shortness of breath, wild variation in heart rate, brain fog, anxiety, depression and fatigue. These are nightmare scenarios which last months, even years. Most people eventually recover, but some don't. Some can't work, exercise or function normally. The convalescent bear both the emotional and physical scars of their illnesses, but also the fear that those symptoms will recur with repeated infection. At least two per cent of people have persistent symptoms three months after COVID infection. Because numbers remain so high, at any point in time at least 200,000 people are affected by long COVID. It's more common after severe COVID, which more commonly affects the elderly and the frail and the unvaccinated, but because young people are getting more COVID, they're experiencing more long COVID as well.

We still don't have a case definition. We don't have a diagnostic test for long COVID. And that means that Australians who have been affected by it have had to negotiate a largely unknown condition with unproven treatment pathways, minimal supports and uncertain prognosis. Reporting strategies for COVID in this country have decayed. We don't know how much is in the community, and we're not doing much to eliminate its spread. We only know about the deaths from COVID—205 in the last week alone and more than 20,000 in total. We don't have any good epidemiological data on long COVID in Australia. We don't understand its impacts on our children, the elderly, the disabled, the immunocompromised and First Nations communities. Treatment options are patchy. Antivirals lessen the severity of acute COVID, and they probably decrease the risk of getting long COVID, but most of us can't access them.

The economic cost of long COVID is significant, quite apart from its emotional and social impact. It makes every sense to diagnose and treat it as quickly as possible, but early referral for rehabilitation is not possible if the services are not available. The committee found that best-practice treatment of long COVID demands both evidence based guidelines for primary care providers and escalation pathways to multidisciplinary specialist clinics with tele-rehabilitation services for rural and remote communities. But there are road blocks to care. There are GP shortages, lack of treatment guidelines, limited specialist hospital clinics and the sometimes Dickensian complexities of our Medicare system.

The only way to prevent long COVID is to prevent COVID. The risk of long COVID increases cumulatively with every infection. Many of us are now on our third or fourth infection. Vaccination decreases the severity and risk of long COVID, but vaccination uptake has almost stalled in Australia. The Albanese government has not advocated effectively on COVID vaccination. Only 51 per cent of elderly Australians have received their fifth dose, so most have waning immunity at this time. Young people have valid concerns about vaccine side-effects, and they have a perception of diminishing returns from repeated immunisation. Mask use in crowded indoor areas, testing and isolation decrease the transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the risk of long COVID, but public enthusiasm for all of those measures has waned, and our state and federal governments have effectively waved them away.

Almost all COVID infections occur indoors. We have not paid enough attention to the importance of clean air. Improving the air quality and ventilation of schools will prevent acute illnesses and it will prevent long COVID. This government needs to urgently review the National Construction Code and produce our first ever air quality guidelines for buildings. We have to improve our buildings and our schools to futureproof them against future respiratory illnesses.

The COVID committee heard again and again that we need better data collection. We have to understand who is getting COVID, how it's affecting them, how long it lasts, how best to treat it and what works and does not work.

We have heard that medical professionals are exhausted after a three-year pandemic. GPs are struggling with the workforce crisis, after years of stagnant income and increasing workload. Hospitals are struggling to staff outpatient clinics and to maintain inpatient services. Long COVID is a new, complex and severe medical condition, but we still don't know how common it is. We don't know how to diagnose it, treat it or track it. The impact of climate change and of increasing population movements are such that more pandemics are likely, so there's a really urgent need for us to learn the lessons of this one.

In preparing this report, the health committee listened to the unwell. We believed them, and we undertook to make their voices heard. This is not an easy task in a society which is increasingly fragmented and which is increasingly intolerant of difference. In undertaking the study, we consulted scientists, medical professionals and public health experts. Many have been, and continue to be, subjected to personal and professional abuse and invective at times during the pandemic and now in COVID's endemic phase. On receipt of this report, the federal health minister immediately promised $50 million from the Medical Research Future Fund for research to better inform policy decisions and to improve health outcomes for patients with long COVID. An expert advisory panel would delineate areas for future investment decisions, and that's important, but we don't yet have any clarity about the basis on which those decisions will be made and when that will be done. We need that detail, and we need it now. COVID is still with us. It is likely to be with us for years.

I note that funding for the National Clinical Evidence Taskforce—which was an invaluable alliance of 35 expert groups which coalesced quickly during the pandemic and acted effectively and efficiently together—expired at the end of last year. Its remaining philanthropic funding expires in 10 days. The NCET was a trove of evidence based scientific advice during the pandemic. Its evidence was cited 30 times in this committee's report. If it goes to pieces in 10 day, as it will if the government does not fund it, that group cannot easily be reassembled. It is ideally suited to development of evidence based living guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of long COVID. One of the key recommendations of this report was development of those evidence based guidelines. The National Clinical Evidence Taskforce should immediately be given carryover funding pending the report of the MRFF panel.

With this report, the committee has delineated what needs to be done: planning and testing for treatment of further outbreaks; reviews of how our buildings are designed and built; and big picture considerations of how we can provide public health care in this country now and into the future. At some stage, we will have to re-evaluate the federal and state divides in the provision of health care in this country. We will have to re-evaluate the lack of big picture planning, how we fund medical research and in what circumstances we should ever again close the boundaries of our states and of our country. We'll have to examine our decision-making during the pandemic, our procurement and production of vaccines and equipment, quarantine and containment strategies, and workforce and economic management. I would suggest that this would best be achieved in the near future by a targeted, time limited royal commission into Australia's response to the COVID pandemic.

In the meantime, it's time for the Albanese government to demonstrate the vision and energy we need to tackle the very great challenge of long COVID. To that end, I commend this report to the House.

Michelle Ananda-Rajah (Higgins, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Long COVID has emerged as a significant health and economic challenge. It has cast a long shadow over all our lives. No-one is untouched by this illness. It has affected young people and older people. It has disproportionately affected people in their working lives. Every single sector of our society and our community has been affected by it.

The committee that I was part of—the parliamentary health committee—has put out a significant body of work in response to this challenge.

I will speak about it, but I will also take this opportunity to cast back to my maiden speech. When I first came to this parliament it was actually through a pathway of medical activism in response to the COVID pandemic and how it was affecting healthcare professionals. This is what I said in my maiden speech:

Watch out for the tail. It has a sting. For COVID, it will be chronic disease and mass illness disrupting lives and constraining our productivity for years to come. This is not inevitable but depends on what we do next.

I will spend a bit of time talking about what we have done since coming to government.

Now, we know that COVID itself is a multisystem disease. It is not the flu. It is an infectious disease, a respiratory virus, but it has multisystem effects. Long COVID is not dissimilar. This is a disease characterised by persistent and chronic inflammation that affects every single organ in the body. We know that somewhere between five per cent to 10 per cent of patients develop long COVID. That may well be an underestimate. Some studies, one recently published in Nature, put the number as high as 10 per cent to 30 per cent. It is affecting people disproportionately with mild illness as well, and that's the majority of patients who now develop COVID in the Australian population, which is generally vaccinated.

What we've also found is that people in the prime of their working lives are being cut down, essentially, with this chronic disease, and it is highly gendered, disproportionately affecting women. It is distinct from a separate condition called post-COVID complications. Post-COVID complications refer to complications that arise as a result of COVID. They can be the new onset of diabetes, heart attacks, strokes and other acute illnesses. They are not the same as long COVID. Long COVID has a plethora of symptoms which range from fatigue to brain fog, inattention and problems with cognition. This is what makes it so debilitating; on the outside, people look completely normal, but they are absolutely struggling to fire on all cylinders internally.

What are the causes? What we know about long COVID, we could certainly fill a book with. What we don't know, we could fill a library with. We do know that there are certain things that may be contributing to this persistent and chronic inflammation in the body. One is a persistent reservoir of virus or antigen, a fragment of the virus, that is remaining in the body in various sanctuary sites. The gut is one such place. We know that immune disregulation—an immune system that has gone haywire and has not settled down—is another feature of long COVID. We believe that long COVID can lead to the reactivation of other viruses that lie dormant within our bodies, and the herpes family of viruses are one.

It may also be associated with microclots. COVID in itself is a vascular tropic virus—that means that it is a virus that likes blood vessels, and where are blood vessels? Blood vessels are throughout our body. As a result, getting sick with acute COVID and ending up, for example, in hospital can lead to blood clots all over the body, strokes or pulmonary emboli, which are clots in the lung. But the problem of long COVID, this persistent inflammation, can lead to microclots—clots that are so small that we can't actually see them with the resolution of our current imaging, but they are certainly there and causing impairment to organs and impaired blood blow and oxygenation.

We also think that there may be dysfunctional signalling between the brain, particularly the brain stem, and the rest of the body. The microbiome, which is the bacterial load inside our bodies, particularly in our gut, is also disregulated as a result of long COVID. So there are a lot of things going on in the body contributing to this persistent state of inflammation, and we have a power of work to do in terms of unpacking that.

So the long COVID inquiry was done at speed. It was launched in around September of last year and concluded in April with a report handed to the health minister. We sought out opinion from everyone in Australia, including peak bodies and patients with lived experience, many of whom have encountered a testimonial injustice where they have not been believed or have not felt like they've been heard, particularly by my colleagues in the medical profession.

We sought out top researchers from throughout the country. We brought forth health departments to share with us what they have been doing in terms of mitigating and managing patients who have long COVID. We also heard from some industry experts.

I'd like to go through some of the key recommendations that we put forward. One was that the committee recommended that we establish firstly a single database in order to acquire better quality data. We simply don't know. This is like blind men feeling an elephant—we have all sides of it, but we need to see the whole. We need better information on the number of infections and the complications, those from both long COVID and post-COVID complications and hospitalisations. We'd like a little bit of granularity around this in terms of the high-risk populations—the elderly, First Nations, minority groups and patients with disability—and we would also like to know what comorbid conditions they have that may be predisposing them to COVID.

Vaccination history is a really important variable to collect. We know that vaccination actually reduces your risk of long COVID, and so it's incredibly important that Australians do not become complacent about their vaccination status. Many of us will now be on to our fourth or fifth dose of vaccine. This is going to become an annual thing. COVID is not going anywhere. It started off as a pandemic, and it will now become endemic. This is a rapidly mutating virus that is rapidly changing and pulling away from vaccine efficacy. However, the vaccines still do have some efficacy. They're just not as good as they used to be. The primary goal of now getting vaccinated is to reduce your risk of long COVID. It is like a game of Russian roulette. If you get this virus, you may be the one who ends up with long COVID, and, if you're a young person, you do not want that. It could really hamper your productivity.

We have also suggested that we'll explore the use of innovative tools, such as artificial intelligence, to help scrape medical records, particularly electronic medical records, in order to identify those patients who may be developing symptoms but have not yet been flagged as actually having long COVID or, indeed, some of those post-COVID complications. We suggested that the health department use the World Health Organization definition of long COVID, which is, essentially, persistent symptoms up to three months after the primary illness, and there is a desperate need for evidence based living guidelines. This field is rapidly evolving. We cannot have guidelines that are set in stone. They must be continuously updated in order to keep up with the research. The second thing that's important is that guidelines alone are not enough. They must actually be implemented so that the GP in Cloncurry or in the Torres Strait can immediately jump online and find out what that GP needs in order to treat the patient sitting in front of them. That requires an investment in implementation science, which is something that I am passionate about.

One of the recommendations that I'm perhaps most proud of is the need for better indoor air quality standards. This is an area that I have been championing since coming to parliament. I'm pleased to say that I chaired the Clean Air Forum, which brought together a multidisciplinary group of experts from the built environment industry, aerosol science and people with lived experience to basically deal with this vexed problem of indoor air quality standards. This is not going to be our last pandemic. There will be another one. And we certainly do not want to go through what we have just come from. It's really, really important now to understand that 90 per cent of our time as a species is actually spent indoors. We evolved from roaming the plains of Africa to now spending most of our time indoors, so we need better indoor air quality standards in order to mitigate the response going forward. There's a lot of work to do, but we are committed to delivering on this.

Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today I rise to speak on this report. The inquiry into long COVID was an initiative led by my great friend, the member for Macarthur. It was a bipartisan inquiry informed by more than 560 submissions and testimony from a wide range of resources and sources. The committee travelled all throughout Australia to investigate the effects of long COVID. When we came into government, we were emerging from a global pandemic. It had altered our way of life and how we, as a nation, had to approach health care. Yet, as we emerged from the heart of the pandemic, we could see a growing issue amongst the Australian population.

This inquiry was in response to the many reports of people experiencing ongoing complications after contracting COVID-19. It set out a plan for the government to better respond to and support those who are affected. Furthermore, it showed that the government is committed to being proactive in tackling health issues and working cooperatively to ensure the best outcome for all Australians.

While the states had worked hard to limit the spread of COVID-19 and had done exceptionally well in keeping their populations safe, we still had comparatively high rates of COVID-19 within our population. As the recovery from COVID was underway, there were more and more reports of people experiencing ongoing effects that impacted their lives. Some people, while the world was opening and going back to normal, weren't able to do so because of ongoing health issues and impacts. From nurses to labourers to retail workers, many people who had contracted the virus struggled to participate in the reopening of the world.

There was no global framework or much research into the concept of long COVID. We knew we had to act fast and create safeguards and support systems for the thousands of Australians who were struggling with health issues. The inquiry aimed to give the people experiencing long COVID, the people treating it and the institutions who support our healthcare system a better idea of what long COVID is—how long it lasts and the effects it would have in Australia. As we know, COVID hasn't gone away, and the danger of disease and its long-term effects are still a danger for many Australians. In fact, I recall a story from a local woman in Wallan who spoke of how her daughter could no longer work. She suffered debilitating headaches and brain fog and slept for around 15 hours of the day, completely altering her way of life. It's impacted her, her family and her work. It's devastating to even comprehend.

Through this inquiry, the committee saw that long COVID will affect one person differently to how it affects the next person. We know the symptoms can include, but are not limited to, fatigue, brain fog and headaches and can make pre-existing conditions a whole lot worse. The Consumers Health Forum of Australia reported concern about the long-term economic and social effects of long COVID. It said many people are taking long-term sick leave or losing their jobs, returning to part-time or lower-skilled work, or facing a permanent disability. Yet, despite this, many Australians with long COVID have struggled to get the medical and social support they needed. They were not getting the care, because many doctors either did not understand their requirements or were dismissing the concerns of the patients because of the limited research and knowledge on the subject. This often left patients without any direction to get the care they required.

When GPs did recognise the issues and referred these patients to long COVID specialist clinics, the wait time often sat at around three months, and there would be added costs that many people couldn't afford. This added to the physical and psychological toll that those experiencing the disease faced. As Ms Karren Hill, the administrator of the Australian Long COVID Community Facebook Support Group, said:

For many it is a serious, life-changing condition. … The scale of its impact in Australia is not always fully recognised. Many of our members are feeling neglected or forgotten. … This lack of strong data makes it difficult to develop appropriate policy responses and easily dismiss the serious, urgent widespread need.

The Australian Psychological Society's observations of patients attending long COVID clinics showed that many patients were not often believed by their peers, families or friends. And there was a concern that patients might be seen by healthcare professionals and their peers as malingering, making them hesitant to get the health care they needed. This additional psychological stress only contributes to the need for more research and data to be done. It was also important to make sure that those effects were heard about and seen by government. This has to be done through actions, not platitudes and meaningless 'get well soon' comments.

With the virus still in the community and more strains developing, the government recognised that long COVID would be an ongoing concern. The Albanese Labor government had the pragmatic foresight to establish this inquiry so that we could be prepared for and respond to the emerging and future issues that COVID-19 is still bringing to our country. The inquiry found that there is a need to support those affected by long COVID and those who treat it, as well as overall awareness and knowledge of it.

After hearing people's experiences and talking to health professionals, this government is committed to facilitating and supporting more research on the matter—so much so that when the report came out the Minister for Health and Aged Care committed a further $50 million from the Medical Research Future Fund to allow for adequate research to be undertaken. This is in addition to funding that has already been provided for research related to long COVID, including more than $13 million from the MRFF, $1.6 million from the National Health and Medical Research Council and $5 million to the Australian Partnership for Preparedness Research on Infectious Disease Emergencies. Funding for data linkage and data analysis projects to better understand the prevalence and impact of long COVID has also been approved. The additional MRFF funding will improve our knowledge of long COVID in the Australian context and generate evidence to inform policy and clinical guidance, improve health outcomes and increase awareness of long COVID in the community. We know we don't have enough data on long COVID, but hopefully this step will go a long way to providing knowledge and adequate support for people.

The report recommends establishing a nationally coordinated research program to coordinate and fund COVID-19 and long COVID research. With the definition of long COVID to be reviewed, this inquiry sets a mandate for governments and government departments, at all levels, to work together to get a clear idea of what this condition is in order to be better able to respond to the challenges of it. Primary healthcare providers, such as GPs, are crucial in the fight, in providing early diagnosis and treatment opportunities for those with long COVID. The committee have recommended that greater support and educational opportunities be provided to medical professionals to assist patients. They say the government should also consider providing greater mental health support, telehealth and digital health resources and establishing better long COVID clinics to provide adequate access to those suffering from long COVID.

The government agrees primary care will play an important and central role in supporting Australians experiencing long COVID. It is amongst the reasons that the Albanese Labor government was proud to announce in the budget more support and investment into bulk-billing GPs. This measure is making sure that Australians have access to primary health care, and it is lowering waiting times to see a doctor, which is imperative in tackling long COVID. Australians can be reassured that this government is investing in protecting Australia's health and wellbeing. As we know, health issues can have ongoing impacts on the economic and social wellbeing of Australians. I know this government will take the important learning from this inquiry into account and seriously consider the recommendations.

Anne Stanley (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This parliament's work often shines in its committee work, and that is evident in the work of the Standing Committee on Health, Aged Care and Sport in its inquiry into long COVID and repeated COVID infections. It is a great privilege to have Deputy Speaker Ananda-Rajah and the member for Robertson, who are also members of the committee, here while this debate is going on. I thank them both for their considered support during the inquiry. For someone who does not have a medical background they were most helpful in their advice, so I acknowledge that. I'd like especially to thank the inquiry secretariat for their support, hard work and logistical advice throughout the inquiry, and I thank the members of the committee for the collegiate way in which these deliberations were made. I especially acknowledge the member for Macarthur and the member for Lindsay, as chair and deputy chair.

The subject of the inquiry was the management of long COVID in Australia. The committee looked at the patient experience, especially through diagnoses and treatments. We looked at healthcare services supporting long COVID and we looked at the research about risk factors, cause, prevalence and management. We have to note that research into this relatively new phenomena, although promising, is very much in its early stages, given that COVID has only been around since 2019.

Ultimately, the best way not to experience the debilitating effects of long COVID is not to contract COVID-19 at all. The effects of long COVID, by definition, last months after the initial infection and disrupt the ability of those affected to contribute in ways they are used to in family situations, work or sport.

This is obviously very distressing for sufferers and their families, and it can lead to disability and time off work, which has significant effects on work and home life and on their mental health. I want to recognise all the contributions of sufferers for their honesty and time in providing the committee with information and their experiences. I note that patients of long COVID often find it difficult to function in normal, everyday situations, and their symptoms are very distressing.

I note that there seems to be evidence that vaccines may assist in the protection against long COVID, and sometimes long COVID develops in people who have had more than one COVID infection. It was clear during the inquiry that a lack of information and data is currently hampering research and suggestions to prevent and treat long COVID. As this is a relatively new disease and complication, it is more important that standardised data is collected for research to look at trends and test outcomes for preventative treatments and ultimately for the cure. The committee recommends that the data should be managed in a single point so that standardisation of results will allow researchers to understand how many people are affected, in what circumstances they may be affected and, if there is a link, when and how to draw conclusions about what and why certain treatments may assist. This information must include information about long COVID in populations such as First Nations people and other communities in our electorates. We note that the care for long COVID patients should be affordable, timely and equitable, with mental health and multidisciplinary support available and accessible in all settings, whether you be in main cities or in remote and regional areas. The use of telehealth and digital resources may be able to be leveraged to assist with this care.

In conclusion, the committee notes that long COVID is definitely a condition, and it may be experienced by someone post a COVID infection. I want to reiterate that we believe that people have long COVID, because, unfortunately, it is the experience of too many people that they are not believed and that they are told to get over it. The committee found that this is definitely a condition, and we do believe you. Sufferers of long COVID experience often debilitating symptoms, which affect all parts of their lives, and it can be very distressing for them. Clearly, more research needs to be done, and I note that our government has already put more resources into that and will continue to look at what else can be done for sufferers. I commend the report to the parliament.

Gordon Reid (Robertson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

r REID () (): I firstly would like to take a moment to put on the record the work that our chair in particular, Dr Mike Freelander, the member for Macarthur, undertook with our deputy chair, Melissa McIntosh, the member for Lindsay, and all the committee members, some of whom are in the chamber today. You, Deputy Chair Ananda-Rajah, and the member for Werriwa are here. Thank you for all of your hard work.

This is an extremely important topic that affects our health system but also has wide-ranging effects throughout multiple areas in our economy with regards to productivity. We know that long COVID is the persistence of symptoms post that acute illness. When those symptoms are persisting, as we heard from many of the people and peak bodies that provided evidence, it can have impacts not only on the individual's health and productivity but also on the family, the economy and the workforce more broadly. We heard that consistently throughout our long COVID inquiry.

I want to take a moment to talk about some of the frontline workers who were instrumental in caring for patients during the acute phase of the pandemic and who continue to provide care to patients who have now gone beyond that acute illness, in particular members of our hospitals, but really all members of the primary care space.

I can think of a few general practitioners on the Central Coast who play quite significant roles in our community in treating patients with persistent symptoms after acute illness, in particular those associated with long COVID. I make special mention of Dr Jon Fogarty. I congratulate him on his retirement but also thank him for his service to our community through the health system. I'll also mention Dr Ian Charlton, from Kincumber Doctors; Dr Colette Hourigan, a great local GP and women's health advocate; and Dr Stephen Kenny from East Gosford Medical. Two GPs who are key members of the peninsula now are Drs Raymond Fam and Mario Fam from Providence Medical. They are amazing medical practitioners, amazing general practitioners, who continue to provide care for our most vulnerable, in particular those suffering from persistent symptoms after COVID-19 infection.

I'll move on to some of the other professionals who assisted us during the acute phase and the years that followed, particularly those professionals at the Wyong and Gosford hospitals. I'm talking not just about the doctors there but about the nurses, the allied health professionals—the physiotherapists, occupational therapists and speech pathologists—and the ancillary staff, who often don't get a mention and receive the recognition that they should; in particular, ESOs, environmental support officers, and the like. All the work they do is absolutely instrumental in our fight against COVID and long COVID. I also don't want to forget to mention Woy Woy Hospital, a little subacute hospital down on the peninsula—I've spent some time there—for all its work not only during the pandemic but also in providing care for patients at the moment.

I'll also give a big shout-out to the union movement, who really supported their members and all members of the health profession during that time and continue to provide support. I'll make special mention of ASMOF, the Australian Salaried Medical Officers Federation; the HSU, the Health Services Union; and the Nurses and Midwives Association. They're just three, but there were multiple unions that really stepped up in the health space during that time.

I do want to mention some of the words that the chair, the member for Macarthur, used in the foreword to this report. They were about how, with the COVID-19 pandemic, we really hadn't seen a pandemic like it since the Spanish flu at the conclusion of the First World War. He noted that despite warnings that there was going to be another pandemic, it did take some experts by surprise, particularly the extent and gravity of it. I'm not going to say we were lucky, but we were fortunate that in Australia we have a health system that is resilient and well resourced, and for the most part we were able to deal with the significant challenges we had with regard to COVID-19. That was in particular because of the researchers, the scientists, the health experts, the GPs—all those people that I mentioned earlier—but also, too, because of the frontline workers, whether they were in our shops stacking shelves or elsewhere. Wherever it might have been, it was the resilience of the Australian people during that time that really moved us forward.

With regard to ongoing care of people with COVID-19 and the persistent symptoms that we see in long COVID, part of it is really about making sure that our primary care, including general practice, is well supported. I think it's fantastic that in our budget, which was handed down by Jim Chalmers, the member for Rankin, recently, we are investing significantly in primary care through tripling the bulk-billing incentive, making it cheaper and easier for Australians, whether they be in my electorate of Robertson on the Central Coast, in Victoria—you name it—to see a doctor. We know that GPs are at the centre of multidisciplinary care, and we've heard on countless occasions that patients with long COVID benefit from multidisciplinary care, particularly when we have GPs at the centre of it.

I commend not just the Treasurer and the Minister for Finance but also Mark Butler for really making sure that this bulk-billing incentive got up and was part of our most recent Albanese Labor budget.

In conclusion, although there are members of this committee who are in this room, I do want to thank the hundreds of people that made submissions to the long COVID inquiry, in particular to the individuals who were suffering quite significant symptoms. Whether they zoomed into the committee meeting, whether they came here in person or whether we came to them in some of the major cities and hospitals that we visited, the bravery they showed telling us their story about their journey from that acute illness to a chronic infection took courage. I want to thank each and every person who made a submission, which led to the recommendations from our long COVID inquiry and the report that followed.

Also, I make mention of the inquiry secretariat. As you know, Deputy Chair, there were hundreds of submissions that we went through, but the bulk of the hard work was done but our secretariat. They are always professional in their conduct and in the work that they undertake, whether that's in this House or whether that's on the road or via Zoom. I want to particularly mention Clare Anderson, Kate Portus, Kate Morris, Cassie Davis and Cathy Rouland, the members of the secretariat for this inquiry. They were amazing in everything that they did towards the recommendations that came out of this long COVID inquiry.

In conclusion, I want to thank the Chair and Deputy Chair of the COVID inquiry, the members for Macarthur and Lindsay, for all the work that they've undertaken. This was such an important inquiry to undertake into long COVID and repeated COVID infections, particularly in the aftermath of the acute phase of the pandemic. I think the title of this inquiry was apt, Sick and tired: Casting a long shadow, because we know that's what long COVID does. I want to commend this report to the House.

Cassandra Fernando (Holt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the debate be adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next day of sitting.

Question agreed to.