Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

I want to start my remarks by speaking directly to the people of Victoria. Months ago the people of Victoria faced a fork in the road. In August Victoria experienced a daily peak of 725 COVID-19 cases. At the same time, the United Kingdom was experiencing 891 cases a day. This morning Victoria recorded one new case. Yesterday the United Kingdom recorded 19,000 cases.

This was not inevitable. Victoria could have gone down the United Kingdom's road. This result is a testament to the people of Victoria—all Victorians. It's a testament to the children who've missed out on birthday parties. It's a testament to the friends and families who haven't attended the funerals of loved ones. It's a testament to businesses that have kept their doors shut despite their love of their business. And, yes, it's a testament to the tough and difficult decisions taken by Premier Andrews and his government.

Our support on this side of the House goes to the people of Victoria and the Victorian government just as it went to the people and government of Tasmania as they dealt with the outbreak in the north-west of Tasmania, just as it went and goes to the people and government of New South Wales as they deal with the outbreaks in Sydney. COVID-19 is not a matter of jurisdiction and it should not be a matter of party politics. This virus won't be defeated anywhere until it's defeated everywhere, and we all have a stake in our shared success.

But, as Victorians have undertaken this massive effort, they've endured a federal government and cabinet ministers taking cheap shots at them and their government—a conga line of cabinet ministers champing at the bit to criticise Victoria and its government, pretending that they're epidemiologists when actually they're just politicians. The Morrison government has put marketing before medicine when it comes to the people of Victoria.

It wasn't meant to be this way. The government told us, when it suited them politically, that we were all in this together. Back in March, announcing the so-called national cabinet, the Prime Minister in thanking the states and territories thanked them for their strong sense of unity, cooperation and purpose. That was a long time ago. The Minister for Health, never short of hyperbole, said:

… people will look back on this National Cabinet as being one of the most amazing achievements of the Federation in Australia's first 200 years.

The Federation is only 120 years old. He already regards it as better than World War II and he's claiming the next 80 years as well!

The national cabinet did play a role, I acknowledge, because, when the Prime Minister was still saying he was going to go to the football, Premier Andrews and Premier Berejiklian dragged him to tougher lockdowns through the national cabinet, dragged him to the restrictions that were necessary to save the lives of Australians. The Prime Minister said in March:

… everybody's working together. There's no quibbling … We'll just get on and do it, because that's what we all owe it to you to keep you safe.

I actually agree with the Prime Minister then, not the Prime Minister now. I agree with what he said then. That is what they owe the Australian people, but it's not what they have delivered.

We have seen cabinet minister after cabinet minister line up to criticise Victoria and its response. Head of the queue, as is often the case, has been none other than the Treasurer. We all know the Treasurer loves a headline. We know the most dangerous place to be in Parliament House is between the Treasurer and a TV camera—don't find yourself there! He's always got advice to give to the states on how to do better and to business on how to do better, but now he's reached a new low. Just yesterday he accused the Premier of Victoria of 'bloody-mindedness', 'stubbornness' and 'making it up as he goes'. This is from a Treasurer who said as recently as August:

But I'm not serving Victorians or Australians by engaging in a slanging match.

Well, no, he's not. He would not be serving Australians and Victorians by engaging in a slanging match, but engaging in a slanging match is exactly what he's doing now.

Incidentally, I saw the handiwork of some of the Treasurer's infamous backgrounding and networking on the front page of The Australian today. Faithfully reporting, it said:

Political observers have noted he—

the Treasurer—

is a popular figure in his own state, winning 48,928 first-preference votes in his seat of Kooyong at the 2019 election while Mr Andrews received 19,649 votes in his state electorate.

I wonder who those political observers might be—maybe sources close to the Treasurer's office? But, knowing that state electorates and federal electorates are a different size, I did a quick exercise and found that Mr Frydenberg received 49.4 per cent of the primary vote but Mr Andrews received 56.7 per cent of his primary vote. If the Treasurer thinks that 49 per cent makes him more popular than 57 per cent, maybe we have an insight into how he lost $60 billion in his costings.

Close behind the Treasurer has been the acting minister for immigration. The acting minister for immigration has been arguing that the New South Wales and Victorian figures are similar and so, therefore, the restrictions should be similar—again, pretending to be an epidemiologist. On the face of it, yes, New South Wales and Victoria have had similar figures. In the last 14 days, Victoria has had 108 cases and New South Wales has had 105. But if the acting minister for immigration bothered to do some research he'd know that in New South Wales 55 of those cases have come from overseas and no cases in Victoria have come from overseas, for obvious reasons. They have all come from community transmission, which is a very different set of arrangements. So my advice to the acting minister for immigration is to do his job, get the travel bubble right and not blame other people. And maybe the acting minister for immigration might want to consider not engaging in conduct which can only be described as criminal. That might be my advice to the acting minister for immigration.

This is part of a pattern of behaviour by these ministers in this government. When they had the chance months ago, they stood at the dispatch box and demanded Premier Palaszczuk open her borders to Victoria and everywhere else. Imagine if she'd listened to them. Imagine the catastrophe in Queensland if she'd opened the borders when they said. She was right and they were wrong. I wonder if they'd have apologised if she'd actually listened to them. I wonder if they'd have apologised to her for that poor advice. Don't forget that this government, to their shame, intervened in a Federal Court case to back their preference buddy, their advertising buddy Clive Palmer, to undermine public health and undermine the government of Western Australia.

We all know this activity by cabinet ministers serves a purpose for this government. It's a distraction from their failures. They want Victoria to open up more quickly. We'd all like to see Victoria open up more quickly, no-one more so than our Victorian colleagues. Maybe Victoria could open up more quickly if we had a COVIDSafe app that worked, if the federal government's responsibility was met. We've had 27,000 cases in Australia. There would have been hundreds of thousands of contacts of those 27,000 cases. Do you know how many contacts have been traced by the COVIDSafe app without assistance from manual tracers? There have been 14—one four—cases traced by the COVIDSafe app. There was $70 million spent on development and marketing. That's a cost of $5 million per contact. I've seen better value from land deals at Badgerys Creek airport under this government than from the COVIDSafe app. It has been a disgrace.

We had the Ruby Princess. The Prime Minister told us that cruise ships would arrive under bespoke arrangements—'under the direct command of Border Force', he told us. Yet we've seen the disaster that was the Ruby Princess. Then, most tragically of all, we've seen the disaster in aged care, which is the direct constitutional responsibility of the federal government. There have been 683 deaths of elderly Australians under a minister, the Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians, who, I regret to tell the House, is simply not up to the job. The president of the Australian Medical Association put it well when he said, 'COVID-19 took the world by surprise, but its effects on Australia's aged care system were entirely predictable.' That's right. They were predictable because aged care under this government is underfunded, undervalued and underinvested in, because the regulator has been asleep at the wheel on this government's watch. And it's all their responsibility.

We know these events—this commentary, this undermining of Victoria's response—have real consequences. There are plenty of conspiracy theories, plenty of people who say that we shouldn't have these restrictions and that we shouldn't have these lockdowns. There's plenty of undermining out there. We have to accept that and understand that, but not from the federal government, because Victorians, Western Australians and Queenslanders deserve better than that. When it comes to this government, when this Prime Minister has the choice between uniting and dividing he will divide every time. When he has the choice between substance and spin he will go for spin. He has put marketing ahead of medicine. He has played politics with the pandemic. This has had real consequences for Australians—not just Victorians but all Australians—and this Prime Minister is responsible for that. He's responsible for the conduct of his cabinet ministers. He's responsible for the conduct of his Treasurer and his acting minister for immigration and all the others. He's responsible, but he won't take responsibility. But that's what we've come to expect from Scott Morrison as Prime Minister.

See this speech in context