Australia on Tuesday intensified its demand for global cooperation from all nations to review the origin of the coronavirus as well as the World Health Organisation's handling of the global pandemic.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) is facing criticism for not ensuring that China reported accurate numbers following the initial case in the city of Wuhan in December, hindering other nations' response to the pandemic.
Australia has been calling for an independent review to help countries better understand the genesis of coronavirus. This will further help them in strategising how to deal with the virus.
''It's important the WHO acts, and all parties that are part of the WHO, act with great transparency," The Age newspaper quoted Prime Minister Scott Morrison as saying.
Morrison said it was important to have a global inquiry, and countries can "respectively have a difference of view".
"I think this is important regardless of where a virus may break out - if it happened in Australia, if it happened in China, if it happened in parts of Africa or the Pacific or the Middle East or wherever it would happen to be - it's important for public health globally that there is transparency in the way you can get access to this important information early,'' he said.
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"So it's not pursued as an issue of criticism, it's pursued as an issue of importance for public health. And I think it's important that all countries co-operate with that, regardless of who they are, and we would certainly be pursuing something along those lines," he added.
According Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian government is now exploring the possibility for the UN to appoint an independent investigator to review the development of pandemic globally and also China and the WHO's handling of the crisis.
The latest comments from Morrison have come a day after Foreign Minister Marise Payne called to initiate an independent probe into the WHO's handling and China's transparency.
Payne had said Australia shared some of the concerns that the United States had raised in regards to the WHO and an independent review was needed to get to the bottom of it.
She said there was a need to know the sorts of details that an independent review would identify about the genesis of the virus, about the approaches to dealing with it, and addressing it, about the openness with which information was shared, about interaction with the World Health Organization, interaction with other international leaders.
Morrison also slammed Australians who had reportedly spat at and assaulted Asian Australians in recent weeks.
He said Chinese-Australians in particular had provided "one of the greatest defences we had" in the early stages of the outbreak by complying with self-isolation measures when they returned from China.
"Stop it. That's my message. And I think that is the message of every Australian. Now is a time to support each other," Morrison said.
Australia has reported over 6,000 confirmed cases of the virus with the global tally surpassing 2.4 million.