Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'd like to thank the member for Holt for his contribution on this debate because he made a really important point about taking responsibility, taking action and taking credit. This Prime Minister is certainly choosy about when he does all three—it's usually, potentially, to his own political advantage but not to the advantage of the people of Australia. Today, that's exactly what we're here to talk about. Of course, we welcome the federal government finally coming to the table to say that they'll support a specific, purpose-built quarantine facility for Victoria. We have lots of points to make about, 'What about the other states?' but let's just look at the Victorian situation.

A couple of weeks ago the Prime Minister was finally dragged, kicking and screaming, to do the right thing, to co-fund and to become part of the solution for quarantine. But, in typical form for this Prime Minister and this government, the Victorian state government said, 'We've got a plan; this is where it's going,' but the feds came in and said: 'Oh, we like your plan but we're in charge here. Let's move it to the other side of Melbourne.' They couldn't even pick up the phone and have a reasonable conversation with the Victorian state government and say, 'Obviously you looked at both of these sites and you've come down favouring one, can you tell us why?' No. They had to come out like a bull at a gate and dragged to it, kicking and screaming; they couldn't cope. Instead of just ticking the box and saying yes to the Victorian state government they said, 'We'll help you with quarantine but not at that site.' Essentially, that's what they did.

Today they've done another backflip. They decided the Victorian government was correct about the site and now they're going to rush this through to support that. But there's no Prime Minister on the screen today and no Deputy Prime Minister in here, eating humble pie and saying, 'We were wrong.' We have lost two weeks construction time—again. What month is it? It is 2021 and it is June. We are in another winter in Victoria. There's only one part of the country that's doing hotel quarantine with that climate, and that's Victoria. So we're now in another winter without a for-purpose quarantine facility built. Why? Because we have a federal government abrogating responsibility. That's why.

The story here today is that this government, rather than leading and rather than taking responsibility for the quarantine program, has outsourced it to the states and to hotels. Let me tell you what Melburnians think about hotel quarantine. Last winter they thought hotel quarantine was a good short-term idea to get us through the first couple of months. It's now a long, long time while we've been dealing with something that was supposed to be short term. As we've said in here, we've now had 24 breaches in hotel quarantine. That's not surprising: they're not purpose-built for quarantine. They're hotels: they're built for tourists. This government has taken all of this time to come to terms with the fact that the Australian people will hold them accountable for how this program works.

And it's not just Victoria, the state that they like to demonise; we now have hotel breaches coming from South Australia. In fact, let's just remind the House that the most recent Victorian lockdown was actually caused by a quarantine breach out of South Australia, not out of Victoria. Let's just make sure everyone is clear about that. We're on our 24th breach now, with one happening in Queensland, and yet here we are without a government, a Prime Minister or a Deputy Prime Minister coming in here to eat the humble pie that should go with this decision—to apologise to Victorians for confusing them about which should be the preferred site and for disrespecting the Victorian state government and their decision-making processes about which of these two sites was the best site.

I stand before you as someone who represents a seat which the Avalon Airport is just outside of. There were lots of locals who thought having this facility at Avalon was a terrible idea. But the bottom line is that the Victorian government had already looked at this and, for good reasons, they had landed at Mickleham and not at Avalon. At some stage, this government needs to determine that if it wants to work with the states to do things then collaboration actually requires it not to stand back, waiting for the chance to point the finger of blame at someone and so avoid taking responsibility itself; collaboration means respecting the state premiers, respecting the state governments, respecting their processes and not losing time in the delivery of something that shouldn't be happening just in Victoria but should be happening all around the country. Let's look at the fuss about the Toowoomba idea coming from Annastacia. Let's look at that farce. It is absolutely appalling that the government would dismiss an idea coming from a state premier.

Of course, this side of the House supports this. We've been calling for it, but it's just one step. We need one in every state, and we need not to lose any more time.

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