Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

Australia's defences throughout COVID-19, as I said at the outset, have been incredibly strong. We have shown amazing resilience as a nation and great capacity to be able to minimise the loss of life and, whilst minimising the loss of life, to work ourselves into a position as a nation where we are now one of the most heavily vaccinated and most protected populations and nations across the planet and that is our key protection in relation to COVID-19.

We are working on building these additional centres for national resilience. These centres will serve their purpose in continued response to COVID-19 but they will also serve a purpose in response to other future pandemics, natural disasters or emergency situations around the world. It is important in relation to the omicron variant that we keep a sense of perspective, as many infectious disease and public health experts have urged. Government is working through the evidence in relation to that.