Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

(—) (): [by video link] Senator Pratt is showing no sense or logic in recognising what is happening right around the world at present. Australia has been dealing for more than 18 months, as every other country has, with a global pandemic, a once-in-a-century pandemic. As a nation, we've saved lives far more effectively than most others. I pay tribute to and acknowledge the Western Australian government and, indeed, our other state and territory counterparts, working with us in ways that helped to save those lives. But it's a challenge writ large globally. You need only look at countries like Japan, countries like South Korea, places like Taiwan or indeed a nation like New Zealand at present to see these are difficult challenges with the delta variant. What each of us have in common is we've all managed to suppress COVID-19 to a fair degree. We've all managed to suppress it in ways that have saved lives. But, as a result, we didn't get the prioritisation that Europe or the US did in terms of some of the vaccines that were available. But we are all working hard in terms of supporting our population to continue to get— (Time expired)