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

Not even for a shopping trolley, not even for a skateboard, not even for a pair of rollerblades! You can't leave anything there, because they haven't built a thing. There was a $15 million announcement but zero delivery in Macnamara, which just sums up the chaotic and ridiculous way in which this government operates. They think everything is all about the Liberal Party branding and the Liberal Party announcement, but there is nothing about the actual delivery.

The commuter car parks are a big deal. They are a big deal for my electorate. We absolutely want to see more people on public transport, and I know that the pandemic has meant that people have been a bit more reluctant to get on public transport. Obviously, in Melbourne right now we are facing another seven-day lockdown. We do want to see more people on public transport eventually, and enabling people to park at the station is a good idea. But the problem is that you need a federal government that is actually willing to deliver on the announcements that it delivers. It wasn't the Labor Party who delivered it; it was the federal government who delivered it.

The other big thing that I want to mention in the debate on this appropriations bill where they were very keen on the announcement but the delivery has been dangerously bad is the vaccine rollout. I remember when the health minister, pretty chuffed with himself, confidently strolled into the House of Representatives and said: 'Good news, everyone. The eagle has landed.' One eagle had landed. The problem is that not enough eagles for the rest of the country had landed. One single eagle—an eagle, singular—had landed in the country, but it was not enough. Even though he hadn't organised enough eagles, or vaccines, for the whole country, it didn't stop him putting the Liberal Party branding on the vaccine announcement. We all remember that social media tile: 'The Liberal Party secures 20 million Pfizer vaccines.' Well, we're still waiting for those vaccines.

Here is the thing that really is frustrating about the federal government. When the vaccines started to arrive, the government made all of their announcements, as they do. They wrote their press releases, put their Liberal Party branding on the Pfizer announcement and ran plenty of ads about themselves. They set their original targets: 'We're going to deliver four million vaccines by the end of March. We're going to get everyone vaccinated by the end of October. Aged care is going to be done. Disability care is going to be done.' This was the rollout. What that meant was that we were going to be averaging around 120,000 vaccines a day. As time rolled on and it became increasingly apparent that the way in which the health minister, the federal government and the Prime Minister had arranged this vaccine rollout meant there was no way they were going to be able to hit that in the early days—we're now almost in June, and we're still not hitting that mark—they did not say: 'Alright, how are we going to fix this? How are we as the federal government going to make this better? We made the plans. We made the announcement. We've got to deliver it. We have to. It's too important not to deliver it, so we're going to have to fix it.'

Imagine that. Imagine if we had a federal government that was actually interested in delivering the stuff that it announced. Imagine if the federal government were actually interested in delivering the vaccines that they'd announced. Imagine the health minister saying, 'Look, team, we're not hitting 120,000 or 180,000 vaccines a day, but we've got to, so here's what we're going to do: we're going to put these resources here, open up mass vaccination hubs and do extra deals with some of the vaccine companies.' But no. All they have done is stubbornly say: 'We're on track. It's all on track.' Then they were saying: 'Hang on. These targets are just too hard. We're not interested. I don't care that we're the federal government. It's not a race.' That's what this Prime Minister said about our vaccine rollout: 'It's not a race. It's not a competition.' Well, say to the person who's in ICU right now in Victoria that it's not a race or a competition. We genuinely hope that that person gets better, and we hope that no-one gets sick for the rest of this pandemic, but people are getting sick right now, and the federal government, instead of fixing the vaccine rollout and making sure that the residents and staff of our aged-care homes and our disability-care homes are vaccinated, just threw their hands in the air and said, 'It's all too hard.' There are over 30 aged care facilities in Victoria right now that have not had a single vaccination—not one.

We remember the devastation in the federally regulated aged-care facilities at the second wave in Victoria. It was devastating. And, instead of the federal government saying, 'You know what? This is an absolute race. We are going to act as fast as we possibly can, with the urgency as if every single life depends on getting this vaccine rolled out,' what did they say? 'It's not a race, and we don't have targets anymore.' They literally treated their vaccine rollout in the same way as they treated the Macnamara Balaklava commuter car parks announcement. They made the announcement. They brought the cameras. They put the Liberal Party branding on the vaccine announcement, but they didn't actually deliver. It's dangerous at the moment because this country is vulnerable.

There are other countries around the world—for example, the United States, which has had a devastating pandemic. Thankfully, there has been a huge turning point since November last year where they have started to really ramp up the way in which they deal with this pandemic through masks, through isolation, through distancing, through better contact tracing and absolutely through one of the most aggressive scaled vaccine rollouts across the world. Americans are coming out of this. Americans are seeing the back of this pandemic and they're doing it with strength and confidence. And we in this country are vulnerable to another massive lockdown.

To make matters worse, the thing that started this whole thing is that a man who travelled to India—he didn't catch this Indian variant in India, and we send our absolute best wishes to our friends in India, because they have had a devastating past few months. But this Australian didn't catch this variant in India. He caught it in a South Australian hotel quarantine facility. It is galling that the federal government pats themselves on the back. There are plenty of announcements: 'Look at me! Look at me! We're the federal government!' And then they do nothing to fix quarantine, despite their own experts saying that this is an airborne disease, that this has a risk of being transmitted via aerosol, so make sure that you're not in a hotel, where that can spread from room to room. Make sure that they're in their own enclosed quarantine arrangements like in Howard Springs.

They've done it before. They did it in Howard Springs. They know what works. That's the one facility that's had a 100 per cent success rate. But they are too stubborn. And so they spend a fortune. This budget they've spent a fortune. It is the biggest debt and deficit this country has seen in the history of our country. There has never been more spent. This is the most. And yet what have they got to show for it? They are leaving Australians vulnerable to this pandemic, refusing to take responsibility and refusing to deliver on the announcements that they had.

So they don't fix quarantine. They're not delivering the vaccines. Victorians are going into a lockdown. I have to say that last year one of the most important health measure that we had in this country was JobKeeper. It meant that people could make the choice to do the right thing. It meant that businesses could shut. They didn't make money, obviously—some did, but most of them didn't make money. They were just surviving on the JobKeeper supplement. But it meant that they were able to do the right thing, listen to the health advice and close their doors knowing that they've got a chance to get there on the other side. There are no protections at the moment. There's no JobKeeper that the federal government is willing to support Victorians on. There's no increased coronavirus supplement where, if this lockdown does cause your business to close, the federal government will be there to support you.

All of the good things that this federal government did over the pandemic have now been pulled away. They haven't said that they would support Victorians or people in any other state that potentially could face a lockdown. And so we are literally back at square one, where Australians are being left vulnerable by this federal government. Our economy is being left vulnerable by this federal government. The most important thing that we can do to secure our economy and to secure the economic recovery is to make sure that businesses have time and certainty to run their business. Australian businesses need time to get back on their feet, to get people through the doors, to get the customers back in, and to make sure that the books start returning to the prepandemic levels. That is the most important thing–a bit of certainty.

But, if you want to know the story of this budget, if you want to know the story of this government, it's not to protect Australians. It's not to follow and deliver the announcements that they have already made. It's to leave Australians vulnerable. It's to not protect Australians. It's to not be there and support them through this pandemic. This federal government is simply there for themselves. They're there for the cameras, and they're there for the photo-ops. They're there to hammer in the imaginary nails, but they're not there to support Australian businesses and the Australian economy. And the sad thing is that Australians have been magnificent throughout this pandemic. Australians have done the right thing. Victorians did the right thing in some of the most stressful and difficult times in our state. Victorians were sensational, and we thank them, and we're going to ask a lot of them over the next little while. But, right now, they have a federal government that is not there to support them and a budget that didn't deliver on vaccines and quarantine as it should have. They have failed the test. The economic security isn't there under this government, and Australians deserve better.

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