Page 1332 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 12 May 2021
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primary quarantine facilities for our country will only grow. The workforce requirements for repatriation from high-risk countries are more significant, and the risk of the virus spreading from quarantine is elevated.
Additional quarantine capacity will provide opportunities to consider the return of international students to Australia, which continues to be a significant challenge, not just for universities here in Canberra but across the nation. This must be a national priority, but it is being supported by a number of worthy proposals coming from state governments around the country at the moment. Again I call on the commonwealth to get serious in this space. If we had done this a year ago, we would not be in the position that we are in now.
It is also clear that Australia will need domestic manufacturing capabilities for the range of first, second, third, fourth and fifth generation COVID vaccines that will be required on an ongoing basis for the rest of our lives. Over-reliance on overseas suppliers will always leave Australia behind in the global effort to vaccinate against the virus and boost those vaccinations with the frequency that may well be needed into the future.
I am pleased to note that the commonwealth has indicated it will redirect pandemic response funding towards this onshore capability, but at this stage there is not a commitment to a time frame or a cost. Again I note state and territory leadership on this matter, with both the Victorian government and the New South Wales government putting money and ideas on the table.
The states and territories have led Australia’s pandemic response in public health, and now in response to some of the shortfalls and challenges that we are seeing in the vaccination program, and looking to the long term. There has been a renaissance for state and territory governments during this period. Thanks to that leadership—and Australians should be thankful for that leadership across premiers and chief ministers—the national cabinet has worked because of our involvement.
The federal government, through the budget, I am pleased to say, has included the continuation of national partnership agreements on health care and early childhood education. I mentioned in question time yesterday that I think this is the seventh annual rollover of the early childhood partnership. At some point that might get a longer run than a year.
While the continuation of these agreements is relatively good news for the thousands of nurses, doctors and teachers in the ACT, this was a rare opportunity to make the right investments to set up the nation for success in the years to come. The extension of the National Partnership on Universal Access for Early Childhood Education to three-year-olds could have made a seismic difference to the long-term educational outcomes of Australian children. It means that jurisdictions like the ACT will go it alone, at least in the short term, on the provision of free preschool education to three-year-olds.
Finally, I want to touch on an important announcement that was made by the commonwealth ahead of the budget—that it will contribute $8 million towards an
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