When responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Australian Government and state and territory governments separately developed comprehensive response plans.
They swiftly converted community assets into health care facilities, built supporting infrastructure and worked with industry to provide urgent health, emergency and construction services.
These important planning capabilities must be maintained and continuously improved so Australia is always prepared for a pandemic.
To ensure consistent readiness, all levels of government should collaborate with industry to implement the following arrangements:
• consistent and ongoing national arrangements for accessing private hospital infrastructure
• Australia-wide contracts with major providers for personal protective equipment (PPE) and other essential medical devices and materials
• processes to draw on industry capacity to urgently construct emergency facilities if required.
The Australian Government should also establish a national quarantine facility for use in emergency situations, for emergency evacuations or in response to urgent scalability needs, as recommended in the National Review of Hotel Quarantine.29
In formulating plans, a systemic approach to resilience should be applied. See the Sustainability and resilience chapter.