Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

In an answer to an earlier question this week, we updated the House on the overall numbers of those in residential facilities who are getting disability care. We updated those figures. From memory, it was around 8,400 doses that had been administered, and that was significantly higher than the previously reported figure, which was just around 1,000. That is because there are many residents in disability residential settings who are accessing the vaccine through measures other than the in-reach program. I'm happy to come back to the member with a more detailed number on the situation in Victoria, because that is something the Department of Social Services and, particularly, Services Australia is working on with the providers, those residential facilities, and dealing directly to ensure that we can get a more accurate assessment of the number of those individuals who've been able to access vaccinations in other settings. This is a high priority, particularly for the Minister for the NDIS, working with those providers and operators to ensure the in-reach services—which have been so effective, as the minister has just been outlining—into the aged-care settings, where 97 per cent of those facilities have been supported by those in-reach services. As that program now comes to a conclusion, those same in-reach services can be used to support the in-reach program into those residential settings for disability services.

There have been two populations, over the course of this pandemic—from the start of the pandemic, some 18 months ago—that have been of great concern, and they are Indigenous Australians, particularly in remote communities, and Australians who live with disabilities. Over the course of this pandemic, the incidence of cases that we have seen, both for Indigenous Australians—in particular, in remote settings—and Australians living with disability has been very, very low. I think that is a testimony to the protections and support that have been put around people, whether it be those Indigenous communities—and I particularly want to pay credit to Chief Minister Gunner in that respect, with whom we've worked closely with so many of those communities. I know he has worked closely with Minister Wyatt to that end. But also in the area of supporting people with disabilities the incidence of COVID in that group of Australians has been very low—particularly, as I understand, by international standards. If the minister wishes to, he may add further, but I may have covered the matter off, and we'll come back specifically on the issue the member raised.

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