Steve Georganas (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This government, as we've heard, had two things to do this year, two priorities which were the most pressing priorities a nation can face when in a pandemic. The first was to fix quarantine, and the second was to roll out the vaccine, and we've seen the Prime Minister fail on both those important endeavours, which were meant to have already happened. We knew this was going to be a failure from day one, when we saw that cruise ship sail into Sydney and the Prime Minister drop the ball on that with his border protection, which he's usually so tough on. He's keeping the boats out but he couldn't keep the most important boat of all out. He handballed it over to the states and said, 'It's got nothing to do with me.' And he's continued down that trip, continuously. Even today when he was asked a question about vaccines, he blamed the states. He turned around and said, 'It's an issue to do with the states.' If there was a trophy for the best handball player in Australia, the Prime Minister would win it because he's handballed everything over and has relinquished responsibility.

We heard him say earlier this year that it's not a race, that the coronavirus vaccine was not a race. Well, it is a race. When you're in a pandemic and when you see cities shutting down, as we're seeing Sydney shut down right this moment—it's shutting its borders, and other states are shutting their borders to New South Wales—it is a race. It's a race for the health of Australians, it's a race for our economy and it's a race for the future to ensure that we get this country back on track and back to some sort of normality.

What happened with the Prime Minister is he put all his eggs in the one basket. When countries were sourcing four or five different vaccines from different areas around the world, we stuck all our eggs in the one basket—and also stuck our heads in the sand. This government has dismally failed on the two most important jobs that were meant to be done this year. And it goes on. The government had two jobs: they had to fix the quarantine and roll out the vaccine. Both of these have been bungled, and what that has done is send our economy backwards. Our hotel quarantine keeps on leaking. These were hotels that had been set up for tourists, not for a pandemic. And the Morrison government refused to implement the state governments' suggestions for dedicated quarantine facilities. As a result, outbreaks keep happening, people's lives, plans and livelihoods keep getting disrupted, and businesses suffer. Our vaccination program has been abysmal. It's been slow and hampered, and the government are constantly changing the advice that they give to the public. We haven't seen a marketing campaign. We haven't seen a hard-hitting message out there encouraging Australians to get their vaccinations, because they can't. If people go to get their vaccinations, we don't have enough vaccine right now. They were the minister's own words the other day.

The Prime Minister is more interested in passing the buck, handballing and blaming the states than in taking responsibility for areas that he is clearly responsible for. An editorial in the Australian this week stated:

The federal government is losing credibility with its management of the vaccine rollout and its repeated claims that everything is on track.

That was from the Australian, who are pretty good friends of this lot over there. The Australian rarely attacks the government, yet this editorial says that the federal government is 'losing credibility'.

Since the leadership challenge that we saw in the National Party on Monday, we now see not only that this government is incompetent but that it's also wishy-washy. The new Deputy Prime Minister has been not even a day on the job, and what do we see? We see the Nationals trying to shred the Murray-Darling Basin Plan—clearly being on a different page from the government. When you can't manage yourself and you can't govern yourself, how are you expected to govern our nation of Australia? This act that we saw today was absolutely bizarre because there were more amendments moved in this House, yet they didn't want to debate them. This is a clear message to South Australia that, tomorrow in the reshuffle, what the Prime Minister should do is remove any and all responsibility for anything to do with water from the Nationals, and that way he'll prove that he's actually serious about the Murray-Darling plan. (Time expired)

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