Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I agree with some of the contribution just made by the member for Bowman. To some extent, I agree with the core argument that I think he was just trying to put—that when we are faced with people expressing antiscientific and false information and putting it out into the community then it is incumbent on people who have been elected to this parliament as leaders of the community to address that. As I understand it, that was at the core of the member's proposition. That is absolutely correct; unfortunately, until recently it hasn't been done enough. But where I do take issue with the member for Bowman on is his illustrating his own point—that personally attacking others without knowing what you're talking about is a bad way to go about persuading people—by personally attacking a member of the chamber without knowing what he was talking about.

I will return to what I intended to speak about in my contribution, and that is the way debate about the vaccine has caused me to reflect on a theme that I've spoken about a number of times in this chamber, as have many of my colleagues. It is a theme that I know is pretty dear to the heart of the member for Warringah. It's about what makes good politics and good politicians and how people should behave. To some extent, it flows from the slightly contradictory contribution of the member for Bowman. But first I want to say a few things about immunisation, because the contributions before some of the most recent ones were thoughtful and considered contributions by members of this parliament from both sides of the chamber, Liberal and Labor, about the importance of science and, in particular, the importance of immunisation. They were proud contributions about the world-leading role that Australia has played for many, many decades in the field of public health.

I often come into this chamber to listen to Dr Freelander, the member for Macarthur, make contributions on legislation and issues that relate to the medical profession and public health. When he raises concerns and when he praises legislation, you can be sure that his is a thoughtful and valid contribution that comes from someone who has not only had extensive previous experience in the medical profession but continues to practise while he also serves his community and this nation. I want to take this opportunity to adopt a lot of what Dr Freelander said, because I certainly couldn't say it any better. I also want to do what the member for Macarthur did and put on the record that I will be taking the COVID vaccine as soon as I am able to and as soon as I appropriately reach my place in the priority queue. I have been vaccinated for the flu. Because of my particular health circumstances, I've also had the pneumonia vaccine. I've spoken to my GP about suitability of the COVID vaccine for me with my particular medical circumstances. She's assured me I can take it, so I will be taking it.

When I have spoken on social media or publicly about the need to call out conspiracy theories and to assure the Australian public that Australia's TGA process and our vaccine rollout are safe and robust, I've been asked a number of times, 'Well, would you take the vaccine then?' I want to make it abundantly clear that the answer is yes. Of course it's yes. This legislation makes the register mandatory, but it does not make having the vaccination mandatory. I join with the Minister for Health, the shadow minister for health and every reasonable-thinking, science-believing person in this chamber and encourage all Australians to have the vaccine. It's not a magic bullet. It's not going to mean that, as a community and as a country, we are all safe from COVID, that the borders are all going to open so we can travel overseas and that some of the things that we're all desperately waiting for will happen. But it is a really important step.

People that are 10, 15, 20 years younger than me probably have no idea what polio is. But a former leader of the Labor Party had polio as a child. Effectively, it doesn't exist, certainly in this country. I remember as a young child having a mumps reaction and having to go to hospital for an operation. I had to be put in isolation because my sister had rubella, or German measles. That effectively doesn't happen in this country anymore—I was going to say it's a few decades, but it's quite a few decades since I was a child—because of vaccines. It's really important that the sentiments that have been expressed by government, opposition and crossbench members of this place continue to be expressed. It's a significant public health issue for COVID but also more broadly. I endorse the rollout of the vaccine and endorse the statements of the shadow minister for health. Of course we want to see this vaccine rolled out as quickly as possible and as safely as possible. We want to make sure that the most vulnerable get access first. We want to make sure that Australians know that the rollout is happening in a methodical way and that doctors, pharmacists and staff at nursing homes and disability support services are assured that the rollout of the vaccine will be efficient.

I hope that there are four million vaccines rolled out by the end of March, but I also hoped that the rollout would have started in January, as the Minister for Health said in September last year, and we haven't seen that happen. I caution the government: every time you say something is going to happen and it doesn't, it adds to the feelings of concern in the general public and undermines a little bit the faith in the government and its ability to roll out this really important public health measure. It's important that the information given, not just from random backbenchers but from the Minister for Health and the Prime Minister, is as accurate as it can be every time and is about public policy and not about politics, because this should not be about politics.

I want to finish my contribution by reflecting on how the debate we've been engaged in for quite some time now—and really, unfortunately, we appear to have inherited from America some of the really dangerous trends that emerged under the Trump regime—can go to undermining the community's faith in politics, democracy and government. We know that, before the COVID pandemic hit, trust in politics and trust in government had declined disastrously over the previous two decades and less than half of the Australian public expressed trust in politics and politicians. We really needed to work hard to regain that trust. There are a lot of really decent people in this parliament who want to do that.

Because of the way during the pandemic the state governments and the federal government have cooperated—apart from perhaps the way the federal government talked about Victoria for a while, but we'll put that aside—there has been a return of trust. The most recent surveys and polling suggest that Australians are now expressing a trust in government and politicians that hasn't been seen for a long time. One of the really important challenges that we as parliamentarians face—and it doesn't matter whether we are in government or opposition—is to gently hold and retain that trust. Perhaps one of the silver linings of one of the most disastrous periods in Australia's recent history is that we have an opportunity to gently hold, retain and build that trust. Part of doing that is the way in which we individually as parliamentarians and as political parties conduct ourselves.

In his contribution the member for Moreton talked about how he had used social media during the COVID lockdowns to inform his community of the new restrictions and the new measures. That's absolutely what I as the member for Dunkley did. I know that it's absolutely what most members of this parliament did. When we couldn't go out to see our constituents, when there were no community events and when our constituents couldn't come to us, social media—whether we like it or not—became a lifeline of communication. And those of us who lived through weeks and weeks and months and months of lockdown—as did our communities—know that people were on social media in numbers and at a volume that they weren't before, because that's where they went to get information, because it was spontaneous.

So those of us who had thought about it and wanted to be part of building trust and serving our communities treated our social media in much the same way that we would treat this parliament. We tried to treat it with respect. We tried to put out information that wasn't political, that wasn't conspiracy theories, that was grounded in fact, that came from the federal government, the Chief Health Officer, the state government, the Chief Medical Officer, and we wanted to do our best to reassure our communities and give them the right information.

I can't speak on behalf of my colleagues in this place, but I can say that as the member for Dunkley I know that my community valued that, because they tell me almost every day. Now that we are out and about, people come up to me and say thank you for that. They would be saying it on Facebook at the time and sending emails. That was about building that trust and holding it gently in my hands because I've got the privilege of doing it. That's why members of this place using their Facebook pages to put out what aren't contrary views but are, as the member for Bowman described it, antiscientific undercurrents, using their Facebook pages at a time of fragility, a time when people were scared, a time when people were sitting looking at social media just to try to work out what was going on in the world, as a means of building their own profile by exploiting the way those people felt, is wrong.

Calling that out isn't, with respect to the member for Bowman, personal attacks on individuals. It's hard to say that this behaviour is wrong without naming the individuals who are behaving in that way. That's why I have called out the member for Hughes and others and said it has to stop. That's why I asked the Prime Minister to ask for it to stop: because of the immediate urgent need for it to stop, and for public health reasons, but also to be part of a better politics and a better parliament.

That's why I think suggestions that have come from my colleague the member for Warringah and others about codes of conduct for parliamentarians, why training for parliamentarians in ethics and understanding that we have competing roles and some of them are party political, some of them are local political, but a big part of it is being a parliamentarian and serving the public good, and knowing how to balance them and when to balance them, is really important. This is our opportunity, and legislation like this gives us the opportunity to talk about why immunisation is important. We have to grab it and leave a legacy for the future.

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