Mr BOWEN (McMahon) (12:27): Some say that Australia has had 'only' 98 deaths from COVID-19 and 'just' 6,970 cases. And there's no doubt that these figures are better than they might otherwise have been. But of course they're more than just figures. Every number represents a life, a soul, a story. Sumith Premachandra was a disability nurse, a dedicated health worker who loved his career. When he was diagnosed with COVID-19 and had to self-isolate he wrote of his heartbreak at not being able to visit his grandchildren. Mr Premachandra died in Dandenong Hospital on 5 April. He was just 55 years old. His daughter Sharyn said, 'Dad was so charismatic. He lit up a room and made everyone laugh. Our lives will never be the same.' The anguish that Sharyn and her family feel is being shared by almost 100 families across Australia who've lost loved ones, and our thoughts today are with all of them, as well as the hundreds of Australians who are still fighting COVID-19 today. I thank the Minister for Health for his statement to the House, and I acknowledge his efforts. The minister and I have agreed about plenty of things in the last few months—and there have been elements of the government's response that we've disagreed with. But even when we've disagreed I've never doubted the minister's personal commitment to tackling this virus. And I recognise the burden on him and on his family. He's been away from Paula and the children more than either he or they would like, and the House should acknowledge that. I also acknowledge the minister's office, the Department of Health, the Chief Medical Officer, the Chief Nursing and Midwifery Officer and their deputies, all of whom have briefed me regularly since January. And I acknowledge all the premiers and chief ministers, along with their health ministers and officials. All of them have faced the biggest health crisis of 100 years and faced it well. I acknowledge all Australians who have been asked to play their part in tackling this virus. It's not been easy, with weddings postponed, funerals of loved ones near empty, businesses frozen and our usual way of life locked down. Most importantly of all, I pay tribute to our frontline healthcare workers right across Australia. I speak of doctors, but not only doctors. I speak of nurses, but not only nurses. I speak of orderlies, receptionists, cleaners and aged-care workers—all of them vital elements of our healthcare system. All of them have taken risks with their own lives. We value and honour them all. Labor's approach during this crisis has been to support measures from the government when we should, to make constructive suggestions when we can and to hold the government to account when we must. There have been decisions taken which look obvious and inevitable now but which were far from that at the time, and I'm sure the minister would agree with that. For example, when the chief medical officer advised that Australia should ban travel from China, some outside the Labor Party encouraged us to oppose that decision. The argument was that Labor should prioritise economic and strategic interests, as some other countries had done. But I'm proud that we rejected those arguments and gave the government full support. Bipartisanship has been an important feature of Australia's COVID-19 response. But bipartisanship should not mean, and has not meant, silence. It means being constructive, not being struck dumb. Scrutiny is more important in a crisis, not less important. We've taken the approach that we should ask the right questions but not demand the impossible of the government. We should add value, not score points. Hence, when we thought that testing, telehealth and respiratory clinics should have been expanded more quickly than was originally proposed, we said so. We proposed a comprehensive response to address the flow-on mental health impacts of COVID-19. We thought that the restrictions could have been put in place more quickly and clearly, knowing that the delay in putting in place a restriction would mean that it had to stay in place for longer than otherwise would have been necessary. We thought that some of the early messaging around restrictions was confusing and contradictory, and we said so. We thought that it sent the wrong message for the Prime Minister to say with much fanfare that he was going to go to the football, when that was to become illegal just 48 hours later, and we said so. We thought that the national information campaign was more urgent than the one that was being launched eight weeks after the first case of coronavirus in Australia. It would be remiss of me not to mention the saga of the Ruby Princess, which was a policy calamity that was eminently avoidable. Australian Border Force, the Department of Home Affairs, and the Minister for Home Affairs are ultimately responsible for our borders. The Prime Minister said of cruise ships: … there will be some bespoke arrangements that will be put in place directly under the command of Australian Border Force to ensure that relevant protections are put in place. The failure of those arrangements has been linked to at least 850 cases and 30 deaths so far. This failure has reached every corner of our country and has particularly devastated north-west Tasmania. But, while we've made criticisms, we also acknowledge and, indeed, celebrate the fact that our country has, so far and with risks ahead, been one of the more successful in the world—maybe not as good as some but far better than most. As we meet today, we think of our friends in the United States, our cousins in the United Kingdom, our friends and relatives in continental Europe who have been going through so much and still are. We also think of our friends and partners in the region, especially those in Indonesia, who are grappling with this crisis as we speak. We send them our thoughts, but we must also heed their warnings, because some say that Australia's restrictions should be lifted faster than planned. We've seen some in the business community question the restrictions. Some commentators say that Australia has overreacted. And now some protesters, who have been ill informed by conspiracy theories, are arguing that restrictions should be lifted. Frankly, we've seen some irresponsible political opportunism, especially from the state Liberal Party in Victoria, which in my view has undermined the national effort. Labor understands the devastating consequences of the COVID-19 restrictions for many Australians. They are the reason we fought for the jobseeker payment to be expanded and for JobKeeper to be introduced and the reason we still fight today for those programs to be extended. But, as I've argued all throughout this crisis, the best economic response to COVID-19 is also the best health response. Only by getting on top of and, importantly, staying on top of this virus will our economy return to normal. We've all too often seen what happens when countries fail to respond proportionately to COVID-19 or lift restrictions too early. And we also know it from our own history and the history of previous pandemics. I've shared before with the House my own family's experience. I do so because I think it contains an important reminder for all of us. Australia got through the first wave of the Spanish flu epidemic in 1918 comparatively well. Our restrictions were strong, and fewer lives were lost in Australia than in most other countries. But then we became complacent. We eased our restrictions. The second wave was devastating. It killed 12,000 Australians. One of them was my great-grandmother Magdalene McNally, who lost her life at the age of 29, a few years after giving birth to her daughter—my grandmother. The impact of this loss stayed with my family for generations. Eighty years after the death of her mother, as my grandmother lay dying, we asked her where she would like to be buried. Her answer was simple. She told me and my cousins, 'Next to my mum, please.' And we reunited them 80 years later. That's the impact of getting these decisions wrong. We cannot let that happen again. So Labor supports the measured steps that states and territories have been taking in the national framework to reopen schools and businesses and resume some social activities. But Australians must remember that we are not out of the woods yet. Ask the residents of Newmarch House. Ask the workers at Cedar Meats. Ask the doctors, nurses and staff of the North West Regional Hospital in Burnie, who were locked down for two weeks last month through no fault of their own. We must remain vigilant. We also have to begin to think about what our healthcare system will look like on the other side of this pandemic. First and most obviously, we must be better prepared for the next outbreak. The ABC—and thank goodness for the ABC over the last few months—has uncovered that Australia hasn't run a large-scale national pandemic exercise since 2008, when the Rudd government ran Exercise Sustain. It's also a statement of fact to say that we've been underprepared in relation to the National Medical Stockpile. I fully acknowledge the government's efforts in recent weeks, including those of the Minister for Health and the Minister for Industry, Science and Technology—they're huge efforts—and those of private industry to procure and produce PPE. They have been very significant. But the fact of the matter is that they have started from behind. As of January, there were around 21 million masks in the stockpile. We know that wasn't enough, not nearly enough for a pandemic like COVID-19. We needed hundreds of millions. The shortages weren't confined to masks. We learnt recently that there were no goggles, gowns or gloves in the stockpile at the start of the outbreak—none. Some years ago, there were at least 98 million pairs of gloves in the stockpile but, by January, that had dwindled to zero. In the early weeks of the outbreak, I was contacted by literally hundreds of doctors, pharmacists, aged-care workers and disability service providers—all of them desperate to find personal protective equipment. I think all honourable members would agree with me that this has been a huge concern. Those workers saw what was happening to their colleagues around the world, and they were scared. Yes, they were scared for themselves but even more so for their patients and for their families. That's why we set out the principle that no Australian healthcare worker should die because of a shortage of personal protective equipment. Replenishing the stockpile has taken longer and cost more than it would have done before the pandemic. Had Australia been hit harder and sooner, we wouldn't have had the time to build the stockpile back up. So I think we need to renew and improve our commitment to the stockpile going forward. If ever we needed a reminder that this is not so much a drain on the budget as a vital investment, an insurance policy for our nation, we've had it. We've had that reminder. The stockpile should only be one part of our discussion about our domestic capabilities, because COVID-19 has exposed the extent of Australia's reliance on global supply chains for vital medical equipment. When COVID-19 hit, we couldn't get PPE out of China. We couldn't get testing consumables out of Europe. We had shortages of common medicines right around Australia. These shortages have had real impacts. They meant we couldn't test more, insisting for months on contact and symptoms to get a test, not contact or symptoms, as is best practice and as we now have. It was one of the reasons why we had to make the correct decision to suspend elective surgery. But the lessons of COVID-19 go beyond pandemic preparedness, because this virus has reminded us of what our health system must be above all else: universal. Australians have heard the stories from other countries, where healthcare systems have been overwhelmed and doctors and nurses have had to make impossible decisions about who shall live and who shall die. We've heard stories about the unfair impact on the poor and the marginalised. We've heard those stories, and we've rejected that rationing here. That's the promise of Medicare: universal access to care based on clinical need, not capacity to pay. But it's a promise that is all too often broken. Every year, 1.3 million Australians are forced to skip Medicare services because they can't afford them. Over two million Australians delay dental care each year for the same reason. And one in four Australians with a mental illness don't access mental health services. With outcomes like those, we cannot say that our healthcare system is truly universal, not anymore. This crisis should be—must be—an opportunity to strengthen the social contract which is so important to our society. One of the great achievements of this crisis is that we have, so far—and I'm confident we will continue to—avoided this virus entering our remote Indigenous communities. The consequences of it doing so would have been unimaginably catastrophic. It's been a huge effort. I want to particularly acknowledge Dr Lucas de Toca in the Department of Health, who's led that effort and who's met regularly with me and my colleagues the member for Barton, the member for Lingiari, Senator Dodson and Senator McCarthy to get our feedback on what more can be done. He's worked very closely with the minister and his office, the Chief Medical Officer and the states and territories. But we have to ask ourselves the question: why would it have been such a disaster for COVID-19 to get into remote Indigenous communities? The answer is that housing is so poor and overcrowded that social distancing would have been impossible and so many of our First Nations brothers and sisters have underlying health conditions and co-morbidities which would have exposed them to terrible risks if they contracted COVID-19. And, despite the high quality of care provided by Aboriginal health services, many are stretched—all are stretched—beyond breaking point. So, whether it's making Medicare truly universal, whether it's tackling the regional, rural and remote health disparities in our country or whether it's improving the housing and health outcomes of our First Nations, let this crisis be a call to strengthen and renew the bonds of our health system and our society more broadly. If we do so, we'll look back on COVID-19 and say, 'Not only was the health crisis averted; there was a turning point for our country, an opportunity to strengthen Australia and renew our social contract.' That is so important to the nation Australia has become and the even better nation we can be.