Katie Allen (Higgins, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

As a medical researcher, I have long understood the importance and utility of public health data collection. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Australians and many in this place have also become keenly aware of the importance of public health data. Nowhere is this more true than in my home state of Victoria. As our day-to-day lives hinged on the decisions of public health officials for months, access to accurate and timely public health data was critical. Looking forward, public health data will continue to be central to the effective and safe rollout of the COVID-19 vaccination program.

In recognising this, I recommend the Australian Immunisation Register Amendment (Reporting) Bill 2020 to the House. The Australian Immunisation Register, better known as the AIR, is already a powerful tool for achieving optimal public health outcomes. However, the Morrison government's proposed reforms will strengthen the AIR further, while sharpening it to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. The AIR was originally conceived to assist the National Immunisation Program in 2015 and has ultimately gone on to become an integral part of our health system. The AIR is a national register that records vaccinations given to people of all ages across Australia, including those administered under school vaccination programs. Any parent will tell you they are always searching for their immunisation records in order to ensure that they are keeping up to date for school records. The register has both micro and macro benefits for Australia's public health. On the micro level, it provides a one-stop-shop for health professionals to check and update their patients' vaccination records. On the macro level, it affords public health officials with the data needed to best shape and inform national health policy.

This bill will empower the government to use the AIR as a potent weapon in our fight against the COVID-19 pandemic and help keep Australians healthy and safe. The bill requires recognised vaccination providers to fully report all vaccines administered, allowing for the creation of an immunisation history statement. This can be accessed via Medicare online, myGov, the Express Plus Medicare mobile app, or, indeed, My Health Record. This bill will also grant the Commonwealth and the Secretary of the Department of Health the powers to compel a recognised vaccination provider to produce information if they do not comply with this reporting requirement. I want to make it clear again: we're talking about a mandatory aspect of provision for the provider, not for mandatory vaccination. In effect, the bill will make immunisation reporting mandatory and builds on the Morrison government's other important work in this area.

Our government has followed expert medical health advice throughout the COVID crisis. We are in a solid position to roll out the vaccine with no need for emergency approvals, as has occurred internationally, because we have followed the proven expert health advice all the way. After the extraordinary flourishing of scientific and technological outcomes that have occurred in the last year, we now are at a vital point to ensure that Australians embrace this progress with enthusiasm. I call on all Australians to continue to follow medical expert advice from the government. Let me be very clear. The only advice I back and support is the proven expert evidence based advice; the only advice the government supports and backs is the proven expert evidence based advice. We the government do not take advice from mavericks or solo operators who are pushing unproven advice, even if they are a member of parliament. We are only listening to expert medical advice, because we have many expert panels and expert institutions that are providing this. The government follows the expert medical advice of the TGA, a world-class institution by anyone's standards. It also follows the advice of the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation, and the Science and Industry Technical Advisory Group on matters related to the COVID-19 vaccines.

A staged rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine is expected to commence in mid-to-late February this year; that is a number of weeks away. It has been an incredible period of flourishing scientific and technological advances and something that all of us as Australians should feel very proud of. Now is not the time to discuss or talk about unproven medical treatments. It's time to encourage vaccination for all in Australia, including members of parliament, and we need to support this as we go forward. If anyone wants to access medical information, I recommend authorised websites from the government. If they want to access information via Facebook, I suggest they follow the Australian government's Department of Health for their information.

Australia already has one of the highest rates of vaccination and vaccination reporting in the world. According to the most recent figures, 95 per cent of Australian children aged five years and over and over 97 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children aged five were fully vaccinated. This is something worth noting, because more than 95 per cent of children aged five in Australia having been vaccinated is quite extraordinary, and it is the highest rate in the history of this country. It's something I know the Department of Health has been working very diligently to achieve. Even more impressive, Indigenous rates of vaccination are even higher than the overall rates, and this is something to be congratulated and lauded as we try to protect our most vulnerable children. Judging by these figures, Australian families clearly listen to the science, as we all should, when it comes to immunisation and keeping one another healthy and safe. It is a collective responsibility.

However, there are number of vaccines we know that are under-reported and potentially unreliably reported to the AIR, particularly in relation to adolescent and adult vaccinations, hence the requirement for this bill. For example, the vaccinations against herpes zoster and pneumococcal only have about a 40 per cent reporting rate, while seasonal flu vaccinations generally see only a 50 per cent reporting rate. This is simply not good enough. If providers are providing a vaccine, they should be required to report the provision of that vaccine. The current shortfalls in the voluntary reporting regime could put Australians at risk, as knowledge of full vaccination history may prove vital in an emergency, when treating and managing an individual's health and wellbeing. It's also important for our data with regard to the health of our public health community. This bill will therefore ensure that patients and their doctors have access to reliable, streamlined and comprehensive information on patients' immunisation history. It's about empowering individuals but also about the safety of the community. Not only will this be a vital tool in the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine; it will have lasting benefits that enhance Australia's ability to combat the flu season and other diseases in years to come. Unfortunately, we know we haven't seen the back of pandemics. We know this is likely to be a new normal for the world.

This bill is an important part of the Morrison government's broader COVID vaccine and treatment strategy. It will provide a legislative framework for a comprehensive monitoring and surveillance plan so that any vaccine provided to Australians will be tracked to ensure ongoing safety. That is a commitment our government makes to the Australian community—that is, we will continue to monitor safety.

From the outset of the pandemic, the Morrison government has viewed the rapid discovery, production and administering of a COVID-19 vaccine as a paramount priority, but we will not let safety take a back seat in this country, and that is very, very important to the delivery of an outcome with regards to COVID in this country. Indeed, it was just over a year ago that Australian scientists were the first to grow the COVID virus outside of China, and this was critical in the development of trials for vaccines around the world.

The Morrison government has otherwise been at the forefront of the global effort to find a successful vaccine and treatment to stop the spread of COVID-19. We have a very diversified portfolio with regards to vaccine development and we've been engaged in multiple agreements with regard to global research and vaccine development. Indeed, as a government, we have invested $363 million to support various types of global research. At the same time, we've invested more than $3.3 billion in vaccine candidates and currently have four separate agreements for the supply of COVID-19 vaccines.

As we know, there are currently large rollouts taking place internationally, and it's very important that we continue to monitor post-market outcomes to ensure that we're monitoring for safety as these vaccines roll out around the world. It's not yet known fully the effect that the COVID-19 vaccines have on prevention of transmission, and we await this data with bated breath. We've also put almost $2 billion towards the mammoth COVID-19 vaccine rollout to help hospitals, GPs and pharmacies administer the vaccine in coming months.

The Morrison government is otherwise making way for a swift and seamless rollout for the COVID-19 vaccine. For example, we've just passed through the House this afternoon our proposed amendments to the Therapeutic Goods Act to enable the secretary of Health to consent to the importation and supply of registered or listed therapeutic goods that do not have their registration or listed number on the label. As I said this morning in my speech, we know the Pfizer vaccine in particular requires minus 70 degrees storage, and that can make it impossible to have the registration number affixed to the label. So it's a small but important change that shows how committed this government is to the smooth rollout and how much detail is required for the mammoth undertaking with regard to vaccination of our population in a safe and effective way but, importantly, in a free and voluntary way.

The vaccine rollout is truly a once-in-a-generation logistical undertaking, perhaps only comparable to war campaigns. It has many important moving parts, which must all come together to ensure its success. The AIR is just one of the many important moving parts that we need to deal with.

It should not be lost on any of us that when the COVID-19 vaccine rollout is delivered it will constitute one of the greatest scientific and humanitarian achievements of human genius. In a little over a year, the world has been able to devise and begin mass production of COVID-19 vaccines. As a medical researcher and public health professor, I cannot tell you the incredible speed with which this has occurred. In fact, I wrote an opinion piece in September last year but was unable to find a recipient to publish it, because I was told by the media they thought it was far too early to be talking about vaccine rollouts. All I was doing was getting the conversation going, but it does show how quickly that this change has occurred, where we're now poised to roll out a number of different safe and effective vaccines across Australia. In a little over a year, we've been able to devise and begin mass production, including—we're about to commence—production and manufacture by CSL in Melbourne, which is a wonderful undertaking to ensure that we provide security for our sovereign risk of mass production of vaccines. We condensed a process that would ordinarily take the better part of a decade. This is truly miraculous, and the men and women who've worked to achieve this deserve every accolade.

The Morrison government knows that in the time of COVID, this is national security. A successful COVID-19 vaccine rollout is only one true key out of this pandemic; it's equally important from a health, economic and societal perspective. That is why the Morrison government is strengthening the vaccine rollout framework, which includes these important amendments to the AIR proposed in this bill. I commend this bill to the House.

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