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

Thank you, Senator Smith. Certainly, in terms of the testing, as I've said, Australia has now conducted over 10.1 million COVID-19 tests. This has, indeed, been a critical component of our health success and our ability to track, trace and, as we've seen in the statistics that I referred the Senate to, contain the COVID-19 virus. The work that our health agencies have undertaken to build testing capacity is quite remarkable, and we congratulate them. When you consider that in January of this year there was no such thing as a COVID-19 test, when you look at the work of our health agencies and the fact that Australia has now conducted in excess of 10.1 million tests, they certainly deserve our thanks. We've also taken a number of steps to ensure that we could build this capacity, including putting in place Medicare funding for COVID-19 tests and sourcing the material needed to keep our testing supplies— (Time expired)