Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Senior Australians and Aged Care Services) Share this | Hansard source

I was going to say it's nice to see Senator Bilyk back after an absence, which it is. I thank her for the question. The focus of the government all the way through the pandemic has been to work with the health system and the aged-care sector to support both of those sectors. That has been one of the foundation elements of our approach to managing the COVID-19 pandemic.

It is a pandemic. People will catch the virus, and there will be inevitable, unfortunate outcomes of that. We continue to work every day to clear up the issues that crop up in relation to the pandemic. We've acknowledged publicly that we had supply chain issues with the supply of PPE. We've got additional assistance to the National Medical Stockpile to support that. We've supplied over nine million RATs to residential aged-care centres since August to support them in their efforts, and we will continue to do that.