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

Just over an hour ago people in my community, people in my state, got the news that we've been dreading, that we're going back into a seven-day lockdown. I don't think we need other people to say, 'You're okay, you've got it,' because we know what it's like to go through lockdown. We know how hard it is. We also know why we have to do it. I'm sure that my community—and I wish I could be home with them—at the moment are feeling both the sensation of 'we can do this, we can get through it' and the dread because schools are closed again, workplaces are closed again, we can't have weddings or funerals or see loved ones. All this will be mixed with a feeling of 'but this didn't have to happen'.

It didn't have to happen. As the acting Premier said, when I was watching his press conference this morning, across this country we have a vaccination rollout that is too slow, that is behind where it should have been. Now we see the consequences of that across a state where people are once again having to sacrifice, not only for their own health but for the health of the community and for the ongoing good of the country, let alone the economy that the Morrison government likes to talk about so much. The Prime Minister had two jobs this year: the vaccination rollout and quarantine. But here we are, yet again, talking about a COVID outbreak because it's escaped from hotel quarantine. There were members of the government, including, extraordinarily, members of the Victorian government, who last year appeared to take some delight in attacking the Victorian state government when there were leaks of COVID from hotel quarantine. But now we've seen it happen across the country.

My state is now in lockdown because of a leak from hotel quarantine in South Australia, and yet we still have a Prime Minister who won't take responsibility for a national quarantine strategy and proper fit-for-purpose quarantine facilities. We had members of the government giving speeches just before me about how terrific the hotel quarantine system in Australia is and apparently how outrageous it is for anyone to query why this federal government has not put in place proper quarantine facilities. I realise that the member for Sturt doesn't come from Victoria, so his community aren't locked down, but he certainly comes from the state where the outbreak occurred, which has led to Victoria being locked down.

The Prime Minister needs to stand up and take responsibility for what he's responsible for, and the member opposite can scoff at me giving a speech about my state going into lockdown, but she needs to perhaps think about it before she does that, because these are real people I'm talking about, and if the member across the chamber wants to act like someone who doesn't care about the health of real people, she can think about her own actions.

This vaccine rollout across my state has not made it to all of the aged-care facilities. It has not made it to the disability residential facilities. It has not made it to the GP clinics in my electorate where, today, people are being told that GP clinics do not have federally supplied vaccines to give to members of my community. It is not good enough. It is not good enough to say, 'Oh, but we're doing better than other countries around the world.' We're still not doing enough. The measure shouldn't be: other countries are worse. The measure should be: we are looking after Australian citizens in the best possible way at all times. It's not good enough at the moment.

Aside from the Prime Minister's failure to do the two things he needed to do this year—make sure the vaccination rollout went smoothly and establish quarantine—there has been an extraordinary failure by the government to get a public health message out there that resonates about getting vaccinated. And I say it's extraordinary because if there's one thing that the Prime Minister is good at it is marketing and advertising. We see advertising programs across the world that are resonating with other countries' communities. If Dolly Parton can get out there in America and Elton John can get out there in the UK and the governments can be involved in getting their citizens to get vaccinated, why can't we do that in Australia? Every member of this chamber should be doing everything they can at every moment to encourage people to get vaccinated.

I've been vaccinated and been part of a public health campaign and gone out there and told people to be vaccinated, so no-one on that side of the chamber should be mumbling about involvement in promoting vaccinations. I won't ask anyone to do something I haven't done. I went out there, as part of a vulnerable community, and got vaccinated and said to the Australian people, 'I'm doing it and you should be doing it.' And I'll continue to do that at every opportunity that's given to me, because that's what we need to be doing in this country. If you have concerns about the vaccination, don't go onto the internet, don't go to Facebook, don't go to Twitter. Go to your GP, get the medical advice that you need and get vaccinated. We can see in Victoria why it is so crucial to get that vaccination. Do what you can to get vaccinated as soon as you can. And do what you can to make sure that pressure is continued to be put on the government to get that vaccination rollout where it is needed.

This legislation also talks about private health insurance. I just want to make three points about health in this country, which I've made before, but they continue to be incredibly important and more work needs to be done. The first is the importance of a preventative health strategy in this country. I was at a Cancer Council Biggest Morning Tea event this morning, where we were promoting people over 50 doing the screening test for bowel cancer. That's really important. Something like 103 people die a week in Australia of bowel cancer. We have one of the highest rates of bowel cancer in the world. Part of that is because of the lifestyles that we live in Australia and the food we consume, and the way in which we don't look after our health. Preventative health is really important. We need to continue to fund screening programs. The federal government has put money into screening programs, including, today, to the Cancer Council for bowel screening, and that's to be congratulated. We also need to continue to do more about health education in this country—about healthy eating, healthy living, healthy exercise.

The other general point about our health system is that it's not equitable and it's not universal, as much as we want it to be. We keep talking about our universal public health system. I represent an outer suburban electorate, and we can't get enough bulk billing GPs and we can't retain them. There is a problem with the system and the way it's operating. There is a problem with the incentive for Australian-trained doctors to work in bulk billing clinics in lower socioeconomic areas. We urgently need to look at how we can encourage doctors, Australian-trained doctors and overseas doctors, to work in bulk billing clinics, not just in the regions and remotely but in outer suburban areas, like my electorate, where people rely on bulk billing to get their health care. It's urgent and more work needs to be done.

Health care is a human right. Decent, accessible, affordable health care is a human right. It's something we hold dear in Australia. It's one of the things we value as Australians. But we are not there yet. If the pandemic showed us anything, it showed us the importance of health care to the day-to-day community and to the economy and the role of government in protecting it and supporting it for everyone.

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