Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

Over the course of these past 18 months, going back to the very commencement of this pandemic when Australia moved before most other countries did—in fact, almost all—and declared the pandemic before the World Health Organization had even done it, we closed our borders. We brought the country together. We put in place a system with the states and territories which saw 423,000 people arrive and some 4,200 cases kept within quarantine over that period. That's been an extraordinary job by those states and territories. We agreed at that time to put that into place—a program very similar to what New Zealand has, and Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and other countries continue to use those mechanisms—because, in a pandemic, you need to be able to adapt and you need to put situations in place that enable you to cope with what was an incredible surge. And what was the result of all of those efforts—the economic supports of JobKeeper and the cash flow boost, and all of those measures over many, many months? The result has been that 30,000 lives have been saved in this country, a million people have got back to work, our economy remains resilient and, importantly, Australians can now look forward with hope, with the national plan that says at 70 per cent and 80 per cent they will be able to live with the virus.

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