David Van (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I love MPIs, because they are exactly what we always expect from Labor. They throw some Dorothy Dixers at us, and we come back and show just how political they are going to be. While my good friend Senator Ciccone says 'cheap shots', there is nothing cheaper than this MPI today. There is nothing cheaper. We have a very safe record—mostly—in Australia; however, as he said, I will probably have something to say about what the media have called 'Danistan', and have called it that on many occasions. My good friend Senator McKenzie had every right to use that language.

Senator Ciccone was right about one thing: the states came together under national cabinet and they agreed that the states would run hotel quarantine—for very good reasons. They agreed it because they have primary responsibility for the quarantine arrangements under their public health legislation. This enables those jurisdictions to best manage their public health response. Why? Senator Ciccone mentioned Senate estimates. Our Chief Medical Officer said quite clearly in Senate estimates earlier this month that hotel quarantine was clearly a public health matter, and that was why the decision was made—that decision being the states running it. It's probably the most important thing that we have done in relation to keeping Australia safe since that time. The Chief Medical Officer went on to say there had been a lot of questions in that committee, and other places, about types of quarantine. But, the key part, the important part, Senator Ciccone, is you get public health issues right. The Chief Medical Officer went on to say the public health workforce sits in the states. He said, 'My colleagues on AHPPC have ample and very experienced people to do that work, and that is why they chose to do it.'

Since hotel quarantine measures were implemented—we're talking about an MPI about keeping our borders safe—more than 358,000 international air arrivals have come into hotel quarantine. Among those international air arrivals, there has been an estimated 3,900 COVID cases, the majority of which were detected in hotel quarantine. This represents approximately 1.1 per cent of all international air arrivals that became COVID-19 positive. Out of those, only six have gone on beyond the household of the person—either a worker or someone who has been released from quarantine. I am paraphrasing our CMO, Professor Paul Kelly. Six out of 3,900 positive cases is an extraordinary record of how we have managed our borders. Managed quarantine has been Australia's first line of defence, and Professor Kelly went on to say hotel quarantine was the most key 'ring of containment'.

Where did those cases go, those six that went out there? They started going onto other things. How have states managed where cases have got out of hotel quarantine? Well, that job is down to contact tracing, and that's where my home state, the one that the media called 'Danistan', has failed miserably. Every sitting period last year, I challenged my Victorian Senate colleagues to talk about what was happening in 'Danistan'. They never once said a word about lock down; they never once said a word about hotel quarantine; they never once said a word about the failures of contact tracing.

Let's look at the empirical evidence here. Australia has had, and I think this is pretty close to accurate as of today, 30,274 cases. Victoria had 20,668 cases, so 68 per cent of cases were in Victoria. Australia had, sadly, 910 deaths. Victoria had 820 of those deaths. So 90 per cent of deaths due to COVID happened in Victoria. That empirical evidence shows the failure in my home state, my very proud home state, the one that the media called 'Danistan'.