Celia Hammond (Curtin, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Will the Prime Minister inform the House how the Morrison government is ensuring it gets the balance right on the health and economic challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic as we build our comeback from the virus and its effects?

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

I thank the member for her question and I welcome the new member for Groom to the chamber, here for his first question time. It's great to have him here with us. He joins a government team that has been focused absolutely on the welfare and wellbeing of Australians in one of the most difficult years our country can recall, especially in our most recent lifetimes. Over the period of our government we have always worked hard to get the balance right to address the very serious and complex challenges our country faces: to respond to them today, to enlist the recovery that is necessary for Australians to be able to move forward and to build for the future. In particular in relation to the pandemic, this has been the case. From the outset, we have always said it's about saving lives and it's about saving livelihoods. This is a twin goal that has now been taken up around the world as absolutely the balance necessary to manage the impacts of this global pandemic whether here in Australia or anywhere else.

Our economic recovery is dependent upon the platform that has been built off our health response—a health response done in partnership with the states and territories, with specific measures to support states and territories in building up their health capability and response. Significant amongst those has been the priority our government has placed on supporting the mental health of Australians with the additional measures that were brought into place. But that health plan has been one that has looked forward. As we look into 2021, we look forward to a vaccine. That is true. It is a vaccine that will be safe and a vaccine that will be delivered in an orderly fashion. It is one that will be supported, should it be so, should the tests confirm, by the Therapeutic Goods Administration. So we will move swiftly, but we will move safely and we will continue to protect the health interests of Australians by ensuring we manage those issues in a balanced way, to get it right, on the ground, so Australians can be confident in the vaccine program that we have invested in so heavily and which will be delivered next year, subject to those approvals.

On the economy, the opposition should be pleased to note that the comeback is underway. The recovery plan that we outlined in the budget is working. But there is a long way to go. Our focus is not just the 80 per cent of Australians who found their way back into a job, who saw their jobs being restored, but the 20 per cent and more of those we would like to see come back into the labour force— (Time expired)