Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for the Republic) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you to the member for Warringah for moving this motion. We've all been inundated with phone calls from constituents asking when the borders are going to reopen, because they have loved ones that they can't get in contact with. Unfortunately, under this government that's not going to happen for a very long time, because we can't reopen the borders until we get those vaccination levels up to safely have a population that has some sort of immunity to this terrible virus. Labor's been calling for many, many months now for the government to get quarantine and vaccination right, and the government has bungled it. This is what Labor would do: we'd build dedicated quarantine facilities such as Howard Springs across the country now; we'd fix the vaccination rollout; we'd start a mass advertising and education campaign to encourage Australians to get vaccinated; and we'd also locally manufacture mRNA vaccines.

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