Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Employment, Skills, Small and Family Business) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Askew for the question. Given that it is International Nurses Day, I would like to acknowledge the outstanding and tireless work of Australia's nurses in particular during the COVID-19 pandemic.

As the Prime Minister has said, we are fighting a war on two fronts in trying to protect from COVID-19 both the health of Australians and our economy. Australians, though, have commenced the road back following the national cabinet's decision last week to endorse the national roadmap for COVID-19 recovery. And what we've seen since that time is state and territory governments respond and provide Australians with the vision for the road back both in terms of their health and the economy.

In terms of the work of the containment of COVID-19, we still have a long way to go. But our testing has now seen 861,000 tests across Australia. The rate of positive returns has now dropped to below one per cent across those 861,000 tests. Encouragingly, as we are doing more tests across the country, we are returning a lower percentage of people who are positive. We have now had an increase of less than half a per cent per day for over two weeks. For that, Australia should be congratulated. That is an extraordinary milestone and one which even six or eight weeks ago would have appeared impossible. We are now seeing downward pressure on those numbers across the country, and that is only because of the hard work of Australians. On behalf of the Minister for Health and the government, I acknowledge the hard work of all Australians in achieving those numbers.