Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Why is the Morrison government so slow to act and so mute on a tool that can help us get back to some sort of normality? I'm talking about rapid antigen testing, an extra tool the world has in its toolkit to give people an additional way to protect others as we open up, but you wouldn't know much about it if you're in Australia. While self-testing kits are allowed from 1 November, they're not on Medicare and there's no information or education campaign happening about how these kits can help build confidence in people—confidence to go from work to the pub or from home to work—with a pretty reliable result to say whether or not they're COVID positive. They show up a high viral load, they're as easy as a pregnancy test and they should be made available to people either free or subsidised.

In Canada, they're distributed free to small businesses and community organisations. In the UK, you can have self-test kits sent free to your home or you can pick up two packs of seven from the pharmacy. In Germany, people with disabilities and elderly people living in residential care or receiving in-home care, and their staff and visitors, are given free tests, and, since March, all citizens are entitled to at least one rapid antigen test a week. We've been too slow to adopt these. The Morrison government needs to step up and lead so that we can effectively use this tool to help us get out and stay out of lockdowns.