Nola Marino (Forrest, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Regional Development and Territories) Share this | Hansard source

Firstly, I'd like to acknowledge everyone in lockdown today and offer our real concern and thoughts to you. I want to recognise all Australians and thank them for everything they've done throughout this pandemic and everything they are still yet to do. I want to acknowledge frontline workers, health and aged-care workers, GPs, pharmacies, mental health workers, those working in the research and development of vaccines, and our defence forces. I want to thank all Australians for what you're doing individually in this space. I know that you understand just what you need to do at home and that you're doing your very best, which is what the government is doing. It is one thing to have a crisis; it's another thing to be able to make good and sound decisions with the best information you have available for you at that time. That is exactly what this government has done.

As the Assistant Minister for Regional Development and Territories, I want to acknowledge the work that's been done in our most remote territories during COVID crisis. I want to thank those emergency management teams in the Indian Ocean Territories, Norfolk Island, and even those working in Jervis Bay territories. Some of these communities are the most isolated communities we have anywhere in Australia. I want to thank and acknowledge the administrators, Mr Eric Hutchinson and Natasha Griggs, for their work and leadership. They're working in very remote circumstances.

As the assistant minister for territories, I'd also like to acknowledge and put on record my great appreciation for Regional Development Australia. When COVID first hit, 53 different RDAs linked in with me three times a week to feed direct information about what was happening right around this great nation and what was happening on the ground. Those 53 volunteer organisations contributed three times a week in the early stages of COVID—and still are now, and that information goes through to each relative portfolio area—and also provided relevant advice to the national cabinet when it was relevant in that space.

We see so many of our organisations and those representing us working so hard to do their very best at this time, just like the government is doing. Right out in the communities, there is a lot happening for those that are keeping each other safe. I want to recognise all those who have been extraordinarily kind and caring in their communities—those who have made sure that people, in the earlier stages and during lockdowns, were limited to what they could acquire or what they needed, and those who went out of their way to help particularly in small communities.

I also want to acknowledge, with the assistant minister here, the transport and logistics sector, who have really kept the wheels turning. Everything that we see and have access to in our supermarkets, no matter where we are in Australia, in spite of some of the earlier shortages has been delivered by our logistics chain. I want to thank all those in the transport and logistics space for keeping on doing what they're doing, and doing their very best to stay safe at the same time.

Yes, we are rolling out the vaccine program. There are, I think we heard today, 12.8 million Australians who are currently vaccinated—and that will continue. I encourage people: make sure you have your vaccine. Get along to wherever the closest venue is for you and make sure that you have your vaccine. To those who have been vaccinated: thank you for doing everything you can to keep yourself, your family, your community and, as the Prime Minister has said, the rest of Australia safe. That's what we're all doing here. Each one of us is doing our best, from the Prime Minister right the way through to the cabinet, to the members of government, to the other side of politics, to all of us out there working in our communities, to try to keep you safe.

I will finish this where I started, by acknowledging those who are in lockdown. Yes, it is extraordinarily tough, and I encourage you to look after yourselves and the people around you when you're locked down at this time. But we are here doing everything we can to assist, and the COVID vaccine rollout is a key part of that work.

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