Professor Robert Landers:

I will answer some of the Senator's direct questions. This year's money is being spent in an emergency situation and with little in the way of planning. That has been necessary, but we now need to plan into the future. As I alluded to in my presentation, we need at least 2,000 additional beds. We also need to examine the infrastructure. In other words, the majority of facilities need to be single-room accommodation, which would bring us into line with the modern, developed world. Any new hospital being built these days is all single-room accommodation. The virus will spread in any congregated setting, be that a two-bed, three-bed, five-bed or six-bed ward. Single-room accommodation greatly cuts down the virus's ability to spread.

Consultancy post vacancies exist across all model 2, 3 and 4 hospitals. It is true that some consultant posts are not as attractive as others depending on someone's interests, but there are vacancies across all specialties and hospitals. This issue needs to be sorted out and we need to make consultant posts more attractive so that we can attract and retain consultants. We do not have a hope of matching the demand for post-Covid care until we sort that out.