Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This is a very important MPI because it actually talks about what's been happening. I appreciate the previous member wanting to quote selected facts, but let's look at some other important facts. There were 700,000 vaccines in a week, but 1.4 million have been delivered—where have they gone? Why is it that only 15 per cent of aged-care workers have been fully vaccinated? Why are these things happening? These things are happening because this government took a suck-it-and-see approach. At the start of this pandemic it was Labor that was saying: 'You need to get on the front foot and get vaccines. You need to shut the borders. You need to do these things to protect Australian workers, Australian businesses and Australian lives,' but the government refused.

When we first started talking about a wage subsidy program it was Labor that was at the forefront of that, saying, 'People need security as they're losing jobs and businesses are being shut down.' But the government said it was a stupid idea. Eventually they were forced, dragged kicking and screaming, to bring in JobKeeper. Labor supported JobKeeper because it was our idea. We're the ones at the forefront that said, 'This needs to happen.' It saved a lot of people's livelihoods and a lot of businesses. But the government callously withdrew that, and people are now unemployed and are not able to go to work whenever there's a lockdown—forced to go with nothing.

The Prime Minister hoped that this pandemic would just come and go. He's been dragged kicking and screaming every single step of the way. That's why, as we get to the two-year mark of the pandemic, we still don't have national quarantine. We still only have three per cent of the population fully vaccinated. There is nothing that they can say on the other side that could actually stand up to justify that, apart from the fact that they have failed each and every Australian in this country.

I know, through a local aged-care facility, 20 people died and there were 170 cases of COVID. The minister came into this place and said, 'They've all been fully vaccinated.' That was absolutely, 100 per cent, incorrect. In fact, only 60 per cent of the staff have been vaccinated as of today. The minister, if he had any decency, would resign, because this is an absolute failure for these families. He didn't have the courage to walk in there and look at the room where people's whole entire lives have been stacked in boxes, because they have passed away and the home couldn't give the people's belongings back to the families. That's something that stands very sharply burnt in my mind, how much this government should be held directly responsible for the failure.

As I said, it's been a failure on every single thing the government has done. Not what we've done; we've been at the forefront. We said: 'National quarantine facilities.' We said, 'Get a range of vaccines in.' But the government—no. It went out and said that it'd done a deal with AstraZeneca when it hadn't. The only thing this government has succeeded on is failing at every single target and every single major outcome it set. It has been the Australian people that've had to stand up and fight for it. It has been the Australian people in small businesses that've had to struggle through lockdowns and the pandemic, because the government is not on their side. The government's quite happy to support Gerry Harvey but not happy to support the cafes and small shops in our strips right across our regional towns and in our outer suburban areas. It's left them behind. It's left them with insecure work and an insecure future while the Prime Minister sits back and goes on a publicly funded journey to trace his ancestors. It's not fair and it's not right.

Another big problem we see in vaccines is that when we look, for example, through the Mitchell shire you can't get access to doctors. People who work shift work, people who work in the military, can't get access to doctors to get vaccines or to go and see doctors when they've got people that are sick in their families. These are all things that've happened that have contributed to what we've seen, where the government has failed. The Prime Minister shouldn't be gaslighting the rest of the world; he should stand up and take responsibility. The two jobs he had were: roll out a vaccine and deliver safe quarantine for people, and he's failed on both of them. Those across the way might say: 'We shut the borders to China,' but the US is actually where this came from. Let's not forget two words that describe this government when it comes to COVID: Ruby Princess.

See this speech in context