In the Senate, I asked Senator Cormann three questions on the governments COVID19 response.
Transcript
[President]
Senator Roberts
[Roberts]
Thank you, Mr. President. My question is to the Minister representing the Prime Minister, Senator Cormann. Southeast Asian nations like Taiwan quickly learned with regard to COVID that they just had to isolate the sick and the vulnerable.
And that allowed healthy and productive people in businesses to keep working and earning money. The result is that their economy in Taiwan and other Southeast Asian nations remained healthy, and they had far fewer deaths than Australia.
Minister, was there any consideration given in April to changing Australia’s COVID strategy when Taiwan and other Southeast Asian nations had already proved that their strategy worked and was far superior to your government’s strategy?
[President]
The Minister representing the Prime Minister, Senator Cormann.
[Cormann]
Thank you very much, Mister President. When the crisis hit, there’s no question that we considered a whole range of alternative options on how best to respond to it, but in making decisions and in making judgements we were guided by the advice of relevant experts and in relation to how best to deal with the health threat,
We were guided principally by the advice of the Australian Health Principals Protection Committee, the chief medical and chief health officers from around Australia and the Commonwealth, and I think it’s fair to say for a range of reasons,
But the early decision to impose border restrictions in terms of non-residents who had spent any time of the previous 14 days in mainland China, not being able to come to Australia, and imposing quarantine requirements on Australians and permanent residents having spent time of the previous 14 days in mainland China, has demonstrably helped delay the spread of the virus,
Giving us time to prepare both in terms of the hospital capacity to deal with the potential inflow of patients, but also to prepare the risk management processes that would best equip us to save lives by suppressing, slowing down and suppressing the spread of the virus and helping to put, of course, the economic support measures in place.
While every single death is tragic and it’s one more than you would like to see, but again, I mean, comparatively speaking, comparatively speaking, the number of deaths in Australia is very low internationally. The number of infections is very low.
The number of community transmission is extremely low right now, and we believe that by and large, our strategy has worked. Now, I mean, this is not a perfect environment, you were presented with, we were presented with a rapidly evolving crisis situation.
We made the best possible judgments in the circumstances, guided by the expert advice. On balance, I believe
[President]
Order, Senator Cormann
[Cormann]
that we’ve made good decisions as a country.
[President]
Senator Roberts, supplementing question.
[Roberts]
Thank you, Mr. President. I acknowledge Senator Cormann’s statement, but he fails to acknowledge that the economy has been devastated as a result of the government’s strategy when other economies have not been devastated.
Minister, hasn’t your government’s COVID strategy put the Australian economy and many Australian small businesses and jobs at unnecessary risk and left us with a debt we had to have?
[President]
Senator Cormann.
[Cormann]
Thank you very much, Mr. President. It is certainly true that we were forced to impose significant sacrifices on many Australians. The restrictions that we had to put in place as a country on the economy in order to save lives by slowing down and suppressing the spread of the virus has imposed, of course, significant burdens on many businesses and on many working Australians.
That’s why we put in place the economic support package that we have, in order to provide, to keep as many businesses in business through the transition as possible, to keep as many working Australians connected to their employer during this transition as possible and to provide enhanced support to those Australians who, through no fault of their own, lost their job because of the Coronavirus crisis.
Now, you know, you can argue whether one decision or the other decision could have been made differently, but if you look at the outcomes, if you look at the actual outcomes, both on the health front and on an economic front, I think that Australia’s in a very good position, comparatively speaking
[President]
Order, Senator Cormann.
[Cormann]
to other countries around the world.
[President]
Senator Roberts, a final supplemental question.
[Roberts]
Thank you, Mr. President. Minister, everyday Australians want to know how the Prime Minister will ensure that if businesses do close or go into liquidation, that receivers and administrators will ensure that Australian jobs are preserved and that affected businesses can only be sold to Australians first and not be cheaply flogged off to foreigners.
[President]
Senator Cormann.
[Cormann]
Thank you very much, Mr. President. In relation to foreign investments, you’d be aware that the Treasurer’s put in place some temporary measures to ensure that Australian businesses dealing with the consequences and the impact of the Coronavirus crisis are protected as appropriate in the context of any attempt at foreign takeover.
But, you know, in a broader sense, in a broader sense, when we’re of course focused on doing everything we can to maximise the strength of the economic recovery on the other side, and then we also said that on the other side, in order to maximise the strength of the economic recovery we will need to rely on foreign investment into the future, to maximise our economic growth opportunity to the future.
