Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) | Hansard source

Well, it was certainly one particular one, and she stood her ground very, very strongly. I respected her views, and I think she respected mine.

We were both placed on the national COVID-19 health and medical research advisory committee run by the NHMRC, appointed by Professor Michael Kidd, the then deputy director of Health. She served wonderfully on that committee. Her insights and her views on the management of the COVID-19 pandemic were very well respected across the parliament, across the medical research group and across the state healthcare systems. She had some incredible input into that committee and did a lot to help manage the pandemic in its most acute phase. I think those in parliament at that stage recognised her contributions.

In the wider field of paediatric allergy, she provided a huge amount of input to our report delivered early in 2020, Walking the allergy tightrope. Some of her recommendations—part of our wider recommendations—are in place today and helping manage paediatric allergy across the country. It's just one of her many, many contributions to health care in this country.

I had many discussions with her about health care. We thought it was rather ironic that, of the two paediatricians in the place, I was the one that would have loved her family history of being part of the Morris family, famous in winemaking. Katie was a non-drinker, and I could have drunk the cellar dry, I'm sure, many times over.

She made a wonderful contribution while she was in this parliament and afterwards. She was incredibly brave. To her husband, Malcolm, and her children, Monty, Jemima, Arabella and Archie: I would like to let you know that I won't forget her, and neither will anyone who worked in health care during the pandemic in those years. She was taken far too young.

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