RESPONSE TO THE MINISTER FOR HEALTH’S MINISTERIAL STATEMENT

Mr Speaker, some say that Australia has “only” had 98 deaths from COVID-19, and “just” 6,970 cases.

And there is no doubt those figures are better than they could have been.

But of course, they are way more than just figures.

Every number represents a life, a soul, a story.

Sumith Premachandra was a disability nurse.

He was a dedicated health care worker who loved his career.

When he was diagnosed with COVID-19 and had to self-isolate, he wrote of his heartbreak at not being able to see his two grandsons.

Mr Premachandra died in Dandenong Hospital on April 5th. He was just 55.

His daughter Sharyn said, "Dad was so charismatic. He lit up a room ... [and] made everyone laugh. Our lives will never be the same.”

The anguish that Sharyn and her family feel is shared by almost 100 families across Australia who have lost loved ones.

Our thoughts today are with them, as well as the hundreds of Australians who are still fighting COVID-19.

Mr Speaker, I thank the Minister for his statement, and for his personal efforts in response to COVID-19.

The Minister I have agreed about plenty of things in recent months.

There have been elements of the Government’s response where we’ve had a different view. 

But even where we’ve disagreed, I’ve never doubted his commitment to tackling this virus. And I recognise the burden on him and, importantly, on his family.  He has been away from Paula and their children for more time than he or they would like.

I also thank the Minister’s Office, the Department of Health, the Chief Medical Officer, the Chief Nursing and Midwifery Officer and their Deputies – all of whom have briefed me regularly since January.

And I acknowledge all the premiers and chief ministers along with their health ministers and officials. All of them have faced the biggest health crisis of one hundred years and faced it well.

I also acknowledge all Australians, who have been asked to play a part in tackling this virus. It has not been easy – weddings postponed, funerals near empty, businesses frozen, and our usual way of life locked down.

And of course Mr Speaker, most important of all, I pay tribute to the front line health care workers spread right across Australia.

I talk of doctors, but not only doctors.  I talk of nurses, but not only nurses.

Orderlies. Receptionists. Cleaners. Aged care workers.

All of them are vital elements of our health system.

All of them have taken risks with their own lives.

We value and honour them all.

Mr Speaker,

Labor’s approach during this crisis has been to

Mr Speaker, there have been decisions taken that look obvious and inevitable now but were far from that at the time.

When, for example, the Chief Medical Officer advised that Australia should ban travel from China, some outside the Party encouraged Labor to oppose the move.

The argument was put that Labor should prioritise economic and strategic interests – as some other countries had done.

I’m proud that we rejected those arguments and supported the Government’s decision.

Bipartisanship has been an important feature of Australia’s COVID-19 response.

But bipartisanship shouldn’t mean – and hasn’t meant – silence.

It means being constructive, not being struck dumb.

Scrutiny is more important in a crisis, not less.

We’ve taken the approach that we should ask the right questions, not demand the impossible of the Government.

We should add value, not score points.

Hence, we thought that testing, telehealth and respiratory clinics should be expanded much more quickly than originally proposed, and we said so.

We proposed a comprehensive response to address the flow on mental health impacts of COVID-19.

We thought that the restrictions could have been put in place more quickly and clearly, knowing that delay in putting a restriction in place would mean it had to stay for longer.

We thought the early messaging around restrictions was confusing and contradictory and we said so.

We thought it sent the wrong message for the Prime Minister to announce with fanfare that he was going to the football, even though such a gathering was going to be illegal 48 hours later, and we said so.

We thought a national information campaign was more urgent than the one that was launched eight long weeks after the first Australian case of Coronavirus. 

And of course, Mr Speaker, it would be remiss of me not to mention the saga of the Ruby Princess, which was a policy calamity that was eminently avoidable.

Australian Border Force, the Department of Home Affairs and the Minister for Home Affairs are ultimately responsible for our borders.

The Prime Minister said of cruise ships:

“there will be some bespoke arrangements that we put in place directly under the command of the Australian Border Force to ensure that the relevant protections are put in place ”.

The failure of those arrangements has been linked to at least 850 cases and 30 deaths so far.

This failure has reached every corner of the country, and particularly devastated North West Tasmania.

But Mr Speaker, while we have had our criticisms, we also acknowledge and indeed celebrate that our country has, so far, and with risks ahead, been one of more successful in the world.

Not quite as good as some – but better than most.

As we meet today, we think of our friends in the United States, our cousins in the United Kingdom, our friends and relatives in Continental Europe who have been, and are going through, so much.

We also think of our friends and partners in our region, especially those in Indonesia who are grappling with the virus as we speak.

We send them our thoughts – and we must heed their warnings.

Because Mr Speaker, some say Australia’s restrictions should be lifted faster than planned.

We’ve seen some in the business community question the restrictions, some commentators say Australia has overreacted and now some protesters - informed by conspiracy theories - arguing that the restrictions should be lifted.

And frankly, we’ve seen some irresponsible political opportunism, especially from the state Liberal Party in Victoria, which has undermined the national effort.

Labor understands the devastating consequences of COVID-19 restrictions for many Australians. It’s why we fought for JobSeeker to be expanded and JobKeeper to be introduced. It’s why we still fight for those programs to be extended.

But as I’ve argued throughout this crisis, the best economic response to COVID-19 is also the best health response.

Only by getting on top and staying on top of this virus will our economy return to normal.

We’ve seen all too often what happens when countries fail to respond to COVID-19 proportionately or lift restrictions too early.
We know it also from our own history and the lessons of previous pandemics.

I have shared with the House before my own family’s experience. I do so, because I think it contains an important reminder.

Australia got through the first wave of the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1918 comparatively well. Our restrictions were strong, and fewer lives were lost than in most other countries.

But then we became complacent. We eased our restrictions.

The second wave was devastating.

It killed 12,000 Australians.

One of them was my Great Grandmother Magdalene McEnnally who lost her life at age 29, just a few years after giving birth to her daughter, my Grandmother.

The impact of this loss stayed with me family for generations. Eighty years later, as my Grandmother laid dying, we asked her where she would like to be buried.

Her answer was simple “Next to Mum please”.  And so that’s what we did. We re-united them eighty years later.

Mr Speaker, this the sort of impact of getting those decisions wrong.

We cannot let that happen again.

And so Labor supports the measured steps that states and territories are taking to reopen schools and businesses, and resume some social activities.

But Australians must remember that we are not out of the woods.

Ask the residents of Newmarch House. Ask the workers at Cedar Meats. Ask the doctors and nurses and staff of North West Regional Hospital in Burnie, who were locked down for two weeks last month through no fault of their own.

So we must remain vigilant.

But we must also begin to think about what our health care system should look like after the pandemic.

First, and most obviously, we must be better prepared for the next outbreak.

The ABC – and thank Goodness for the ABC in recent months – has uncovered that “Australia has not run a large-scale national pandemic exercise since 2008”, when the Rudd Government ran Exercise Sustain.

And Australia was underprepared in other key areas, like the National Medical Stockpile.

As of January, there were around 21 million masks in the Stockpile.

We know now that wasn’t enough – not nearly enough – for a pandemic like COVID-19. It turns out we need hundreds of millions.

And shortages weren’t confined to masks. We learned recently that there were no goggles, gowns or gloves in the Stockpile at the start of the outbreak. None.

Some years ago there were at least 98 million pairs of gloves in the Stockpile. But by January that had dwindled to zero.

In the early weeks of the outbreak, I was contacted by hundreds of doctors, nurses, pharmacists, aged care workers, disability service providers – all of them desperate to find personal protective equipment.   I think all honourable members would agree with me this has been a huge concern.

Those workers saw what was happening to their colleagues around the world, and they were scared – yes for themselves, but even more so for their patients and their families.

That’s why I set out the principle that no Australian health care worker should die because of a shortage of personal protective equipment.

Now, I acknowledge the huge efforts of Government and industry to procure and produce PPE in recent weeks.

But it’s a statement of fact that they started from behind.

Replenishing the Stockpile has taken longer and cost more than it would have done before the pandemic.

Had Australia been hit sooner and harder, we would not have had that time.

So I think we need to renew and improve our commitment to the Stockpile going forward.

If we ever needed a reminder that this is not so much a drain on the budget as a vital investment, and an insurance policy for the nation, we’ve had it.

And the Stockpile should be only one part of our discussion on domestic capabilities.

Because COVID-19 has exposed the extent of Australia’s reliance on global supply chains for vital medical equipment.

When COVID-19 hit, we couldn’t get PPE out of China. We couldn’t get testing consumables out of Europe. We saw shortages of common medicines around Australia.

Those shortages had real impacts.

They meant we couldn’t test more – insisting for months on contact and symptoms to get a test, not contact or symptoms as is best practice.

They were one reason we had to suspend elective surgery.

But Mr Speaker, the lessons of COVID-19 go beyond pandemic preparedness.

Because this virus has reminded us what our health system must be above all else: universal.

Australians heard stories about other countries where health care systems were overwhelmed, and doctors and nurses had to make impossible decisions about who lived and who died.

We heard stories about the unfair impact on the poor and the marginalised.

We heard those stories and we rejected that sort of rationing here.

That’s the promise of Medicare: universal access to care, based on clinical need, not capacity to pay.

But it’s a promise that is all too often broken.

Every year, 1.3 million Australians are forced to skip Medicare services because they can’t afford them.

Over 2 million delay or avoid dental care for the same reason.

One in four Australians with mental illness don’t access mental health services.

With outcomes like those, we can’t really say that our health care system is universal – not anymore.

This crisis should be an opportunity to strengthen the social contract so important to our society.

Mr Speaker, one of the great achievements of this crisis is that we have so far avoided it entering our remote Indigenous communities.

Because the consequences of it doing so would have been unimaginably catastrophic.

It has been a huge effort.  I acknowledge in particular Dr Lucas De Toca in the Department of Health who has led these efforts and has met regularly with me and with our colleagues the Member for Barton, the Member for Lingiari and Senators Dodson and McCarthy to get our feedback on what more could be done.

But Mr Speaker, why would it have been such a disaster for COVID-19 to get into a remote Indigenous community?

Because housing is so poor and crowded that social distancing would have been impossible.

Because so many of our First Nations brothers and sisters have underlying health conditions and co-morbidities which would have exposed them to terrible risk if they contracted COVID 19.

And despite the high quality care that Aboriginal Health Services offer, many are already stretched to breaking point.

So Mr Speaker, whether it is making Medicare truly universal, whether it is tackling regional and rural health disparities, whether it is improving the housing and health outcomes of our First Nations, let this crisis be a call to strengthen and renew the bonds of our health care system and our society.

If we do so, we will hopefully look back and say, COVID 19 was not only health crisis averted, but it was a turning point.

An opportunity to taken strengthen our country and renew our social contract, which is so important to the nation Australia has become and the even better nation we can be.
 
ENDS