Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party, Assistant Minister to the Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

With the MPI for today, the government's inability to focus on issues that matter during COVID-19, I was always going to be very interested to see what attack the opposition were going to bring on that today, because by any international standard Australians, both on a medical front and on an economic front, are doing relatively well to international comparison.

It got really weird for me when the member for McMahon not only came in a criticised that but then lauded and celebrated the effort of Dan Andrews in Victoria. Work that out. If you went out and walked down any main street of any town or city in this country and you asked, 'How do you think Australia is going with the COVID pandemic both medically and economically? they'd say, 'Not too bad'. If you said, 'What about Victoria?' They'd say, 'Victoria's the blight on it actually.' Victoria mismanaged it. Dan Andrews has mismanaged the situation. News flash to those opposite: Victoria have not done well with the pandemic on any comparison. If you look at the contagion rates of the virus in Victoria—and, very sadly, if you look at the fatality rates in Victoria—relative to anywhere else in this country, Victoria has done badly.

Ms Claydon interjecting—

Member for Newcastle, go grab the newspaper or go google it and see how Victoria has done relative to the rest of the country. Obviously, you're going to be surprised that you should not be in here saying, 'What a great job Dan Andrews has done!' There's an inquiry going on into the quarantine system, and the inquiry will find that the Labor government of Victoria mismanaged it. So, newsflash to those opposite, to the member for McMahon, to the member for Newcastle: Victoria is not something of which you should be saying, 'Well done,' because it has been the blight on the whole statistics for Australia, both pandemically and economically.

And I feel for Victorians. The rest of us across Australia have looked at the situation down there and at all the restrictions that were placed on them. The damage done to people's mental health and livelihoods—not to mention to the health of those who've contracted the virus—has been catastrophic.

So, you may also be surprised—given that you're not aware of the situation in Victoria—that, compared to just about every country throughout the world, Australia has done very well, and, if it wasn't for Victoria, we'd have done even better. If you look at our infection rates and our fatality rates—albeit each of them is a tragedy—ours are very low, compared to other countries around the world. Why? Because we got on top of it early. We declared this a pandemic well before the World Health Organization said we should. We had international restrictions so that, very early on, people were stopped from coming from other countries around the world.

In my state, New South Wales, the state government implemented wonderful contact tracing systems and social distancing and hand hygiene standards as well. I want to acknowledge everyone there—and Victorians as well. I think every Australian has realised the importance of social distancing and hand hygiene and has got behind them, which is why we have done so very well—again, as I say, except for Victoria's mismanagement of this virus. Again, there's an inquiry going on into that, about quarantining and everything else, and it will come up with exactly what the reason is for how they stuffed that up.

But anyway, it's great that every other state and the federal government got on top of this, and the statistics for us are very good. But, again, to laud the Victorian government is crazy. So, again, newsflash: federally, we've done very well; the state Labor government in Victoria has done very badly.

Obviously, there's been an economic thing brought on by this as well, Deputy Speaker O'Brien. I say this to you respectfully, because I probably don't really want you to imagine this, but imagine if, federally, Labor was in government as well! I mean, seriously! Member for Brisbane, where would we be at, economically? And would the federal Labor government have done as badly as the state Labor government with the pandemic management and also economically?

Economically, though we are facing great challenges, I want to quote to you from an S&P media release, from today, I think, saying the Morrison government's balance sheet was strong before the pandemic. You know why it was strong before the pandemic? Because Australia's budget had improved in recent years. So, economically, we're managing this too. (Time expired)

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