Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to follow the member for Dobell. I can't promise that I'll cover as much ground as the member for Dobell. It was a fine contribution, and I thank her for that. I rise to speak on the Therapeutic Goods Amendment (2020 Measures No. 2) Bill 2020. Labor, as the previous speakers have already mentioned, will be supporting this bill. We reiterate our support for the member for Hindmarsh, who has moved the second reading amendment. We, of course, will be supporting that second reading amendment, which I will talk to a little bit later in my contribution.

I also want to take this opportunity while speaking on this bill to acknowledge the member for McMahon, who, until last week, was Labor's shadow minister for health. He has done an outstanding job of leading not just the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party but in many ways the national response to coronavirus—working with the government, working with the minister—and has put forward the guiding principle that we will listen to the health advice, listen to the health experts and put that before politics. It has been our North Star throughout this entire pandemic that we have been committed to listening and respecting the views of our health experts, our scientists and our experts on this awful disease. As such, they have led us into the enviable position that Australia now finds itself.

The Therapeutic Goods Amendment (2020 Measures No. 2) Bill 2020 covers three main provisions. I'll go over them very quickly and then I'll talk to one particular part of it in more detail. The first part goes to the labels on vaccines. At the moment there are, for good reason, requirements for vaccines to have labels to display their Australian registration and therapeutic goods number. We have never had mRNA vaccines before—they will be the first—and we have never had to administer these sorts of vaccines in Australia. The very nature of this technology means that they need to be stored at very low temperatures. It is a volatile substance and, as such, it makes the simple task of putting labels on these sorts of vials impossible, so this is a sensible measure that allows for this new technology to be administered in Australia and, of course, Labor supports it.

This bill will also allow pharmacists to substitute medicines where certain shortages arise. The member for Dobell very adequately went to issues pharmacists and pharmacies often face in some detail. Labor, again, supports that in principle. Finally, this bill will help facilitate a unique device identification database for medical devices that have been inserted into patients or implanted into patients and that will help the coordination of that particular medicine.

In my contribution to the debate on this bill today, I want to touch on the rollout of this vaccine, because it is obviously on all Australian's minds. It is encouraging that we are starting from this in a place where Australians broadly do have a trust in science and they do have an excellent vaccination record. I was pleased to work in the Victorian government when they introduced their No Jab, No Play legislation, which helped bring up the immunisation rates of children in Victoria to above the 95 per cent threshold, which in turn helped achieve herd immunity. It was an outstanding achievement led by the then health minister Jill Hennessy. I would say we are starting from a strong base when it comes to the rollout. We have outstanding health professionals around the country. We have outstanding resources and hospital systems that can successfully roll out the really mammoth logistical tasks required of this vaccine.

When we were here last year in this place, I was sitting with my colleagues and, like the sunrise in the morning, in every question time the Minister for Health would confidently stroll up to the dispatch box and parrot his lines about how Australia is at the head of the queue and how wonderful a job he and the Prime Minister had done to roll out a vaccine strategy in this country. On 19 August, the minister even put out a press release saying, 'Australians will be among the first in the world to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, if it proves successful, through an agreement between the Australian government and UK-based drug company AstraZeneca.' On 5 November, another press release from the minister boasted:

… our Strategy puts Australia at the front of the queue, if our medical experts give the vaccines the green light.

Well, our medical experts have given a vaccine the green light. They have given the Pfizer vaccine the green light. They gave that on 25 January. It has now been almost 10 days since that vaccine was given approval in this country, and how many vaccines have we had rolled out in this country? None.

The TGA have done their job. The TGA didn't get up at the dispatch box and boast about how good a job they have done; they just got on and did it. We saw from the Minister for Health and the Prime Minister constant patting on the back—the self-congratulations that they like to do—and self-aggrandising. They said that Australia was going to be among the first in the world to receive vaccines. There have been 99 million coronavirus vaccines administered around the world and not one of those 99 million has been administered here in Australia.

While I understand that there are supply chain difficulties, while I understand that there is obviously huge demand and while I absolutely think that Australia needs to be doing its part in ensuring the rollout of a vaccine happens not just in our country but also in our region—we have a responsibility to ensure that our friends and family in the Pacific also have access to a vaccine—it is simply not true to say that Australians are at the head of the queue and it is simply not true to say that the Minister for Health and the Prime Minister have done a great job in acquiring the vaccines, because, if they had, we would have already acquired them and they would have already started to be rolled out, like they have in almost 100 million cases around the world.

Things were made a little more frustrating for us on this side of the House, and the member for Fenner mentioned this—articulately, as always—in his contribution. At this stage the government has obviously put a lot of money into the various vaccines. I think it's safe to say that we have good vaccines that are coming to Australia and we should all be confident in receiving a vaccine as soon as the TGA approves the various vaccines. We have got only one approved, but, hopefully, in the not-too-distant future we'll have others approved as well. It's fair to say that the government is spending tens of millions of dollars rolling out an advertising campaign in order to build up the confidence of Australians to get vaccinated. Australians should know that, if a vaccine is available in Australia, it is safe. It has gone through some of the most rigorous testing and scientific analysis by some of the best experts in the world. Australia's Therapeutic Goods Administration is one of the best in the world, and we can and should have confidence in it. But we don't need government members undermining the health response throughout this pandemic.

We have seen throughout this entire pandemic the member for Hughes spouting ridiculous claims around hydroxychloroquine in a sort of politicised fantasy around former US President Donald Trump. They are completely unscientific and ignorant comments around treatments. Quite frankly, he has absolutely no qualification and no right to be making those comments in this country. They are dangerous and false, but then they obviously extended to attacks on the health authorities. He even compared the Victorian health authorities to Nazi Germany. It was offensive.

What was even more difficult to stomach was the Prime Minister doing absolutely nothing to stop him, to call him out or to intervene. He sat idly by and—wink-wink, nudge-nudge—said: 'Off you go, Member for Hughes. Keep going. We want those votes that you're acquiring on the far Right extremes of society. We want those people to support the Liberal-National party, so you're free to go out and peddle your dangerous conspiracy theories.' Instead of actually showing responsibility, the Prime Minister let him continually rain his false and dangerous conspiracies. It's hardly surprising that the member for Hughes then turned his false and dangerous claims about the coronavirus pandemic to the vaccines.

We need people to be vaccinated. We need them to be vaccinated with safe vaccines. We've already seen the University of Queensland program, sadly, shut down because it was deemed to not qualify to the high standards that we require. Australians won't be offered vaccines if they are not safe. The determination of the safety will be done by the world's best experts. The determination of the efficacy and safety for Australians is being done by people whom we should all have confidence in. It is completely outrageous that members opposite sit in the same party room and quietly do media interview after media interview after media interview but say nothing of the dangerous and false conspiracies being peddled by the member for Hughes.

'We are all in this together' was a comment that the Prime Minister made, and, throughout this pandemic, I would agree. In fact, it doesn't just extend to Australia. What we are seeing now is that countries that allow it to replicate are allowing it to mutate—countries like South Africa, Brazil and the United Kingdom. The more virus there is, the more chances it has to mutate into a virus that may reduce the efficacy of a vaccine. Even with these vaccines, we are still potentially months away from being in front of this coronavirus pandemic. Australia may yet see the worst of this pandemic, and I really hope that I have never been more wrong. I really hope that I have never been more wrong.

But we cannot have members of the Australian government undermining our health authorities. We cannot have members of the Australian government attacking the very thing that will help bring Australia back to increased levels of normality. We cannot have members of the government make unscientific claims and we cannot have members of Scott Morrison's government attacking the very health experts that we need to be listening to to guide us through this pandemic. It is not good enough to allow the member for Hughes to continue his false peddling of conspiracies. It needs to stop.

On this bill, we say, the more safe vaccines that are available to Australians, the better. But the government shouldn't stop now and rest on its laurels. As this virus evolves, so should our vaccine strategy, and the government should be doing more deals with companies that potentially will be able to tackle the different variants of this virus. We will be dealing with vaccines long into the future. The different generations of vaccines that we will be seeing and that we will be required to get will require ongoing management long into the future.

But getting a vaccine will make a difference. We need to have full confidence, and Australians should have full confidence, in the rigour and high standards that Australian scientists and experts are making vaccine producers achieve in order for Australians to receive one of the coronavirus vaccines. At the moment, we have the Pfizer vaccine; that has been approved. It would nice if we had the Pfizer vaccine being rolled out in this country. We are still waiting for them and the delays are concerning. Nonetheless, we on this side of House will keep pushing for a commitment to science, a commitment to our health experts and a commitment to vaccinations that will help save lives. In the meantime, we hope that those opposite find it within themselves to have enough guts to call out those who are working against the health strategy and attacking our health authorities.

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