Daniel Mulino (Fraser, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

[by video link] I begin by acknowledging the difficulties that so many people in so many communities around our country are experiencing at the moment. Of course, in doing so I acknowledge the fact that the residents of my community in the electorate of Fraser experienced these difficulties for four long months and have experienced them in subsequent lockdowns since then. What makes this all the more difficult to watch in other parts of the country is that so much of what we are seeing around Australia at the moment was foreseeable and avoidable. What we experienced in Victoria between July and October last year should have sent a message to this federal government that so many risks, which were a result of its inaction, needed to be acted upon.

What were some of those risks? Well, what we saw in Victoria last year was an outbreak that took a great deal of sacrifice on the part of our community to manage, an outbreak that was a result of a breach of our hotel quarantine system. The lesson that should have been learned back then was that our hotel quarantine system wasn't fit for purpose. In my community, here in Fraser, we had a great number of people who experienced a huge amount of mental health distress and economic distress. Sadly, we experienced the deaths of many people. What we saw in Victoria at that time was a four-month-long process that took the whole of our community an incredible amount of sacrifice to overcome, and almost all of it was the result of a single breach of hotel quarantine. Tellingly, it was at the end of that exhausting process for this community, in October 2020, that the Halton report came out and made very clear that hotel quarantine is not fit for purpose and that our country should not rely on hotel quarantine for managing the risks associated with people necessarily returning to our country.

This was not a risk that was unforeseeable. This was not a risk that was beyond the control of the federal government. This was not a risk that was beyond the responsibility of the federal government. This is a responsibility that lies at the heart of what it is our federal government should be doing for our community. As the Leader of the Opposition has pointed out on so many occasions, this government has two jobs. The first of those jobs is to provide a fit-for-purpose quarantine system. The second of those jobs is the vaccination rollout.

As I have indicated, what we are seeing is that our quarantine system is still not up to scratch almost a year after that long lockdown commenced and over a year after so many people in the Victorian community suffered from the results of a breach of that system. It is a system that is still no better prepared for the return of people from overseas than it was back then. We often say that this government isn't up for the race, that this government is too slow when it comes to vaccination. But it is entirely the same situation when it comes to the quarantine system. What we have seen over the last year is the government ignoring the recommendations of the Halton report. What we have seen over the last year is the government being completely reactive when it comes to the necessary improvements we need to see in the quarantine system. We see a government that waits for state governments to come forward with proposals and then decides whether or not to accept them, rather than taking the responsibility it should be taking on and coming up with its own plan for making our quarantine system more rigorous. This government often makes the assertion that our current hotel quarantine system is 99.99 per cent secure, which is a classic case of lies, damned lies and statistics. It's a complete misrepresentation of the kinds of risks that our hotel quarantine system is imposing on our country.

A far better representation of the risks that the current situation is imposing on our country is a recent academic study, which doesn't look at the entire pool of people coming in—which of course includes uninfected and infected people—which shows that out of every 250 infected people coming through that system one leads to an outbreak. It is that statistic which clearly indicates why it is that our country has experienced over 25 outbreaks as a result of the hotel quarantine system. What we have is a situation where over a year since that major outbreak occurred we still haven't seen material action by this government. We still haven't seen a major strengthening of the quarantine system. Any proposals that have come forward have been as a result of actions, ideas and proposals coming from state governments, which is entirely inappropriate given that, as I indicated earlier, this falls squarely within the Commonwealth's responsibility.

The second of the two jobs that the government had, of course, was the vaccination program. This, again, is an example of where the Commonwealth is a laggard when it should be aiming to be on the podium. Again, we find ourselves near last in the OECD. We should be aiming to be near the front of the queue. This is a claim, again, that the government has made on a number of occasions. The government will say that there have been some unforeseeable road blocks in its program but this is entirely not the case. As a number of members of the opposition—including the Leader of the Opposition and including the shadow minister for health at the time Chris Bowen—indicated on many occasions the government was not procuring a sufficient diversity of vaccines. This is what's lying at the heart of the problems that we face as a nation. Indeed, the Minister for Health, in the MPI earlier today, conceded that what is lying at the heart of the problems we face at the moment is supply site constraints. That is entirely due to the fact that—just one example—we didn't take up opportunities to procure as much Pfizer as we ought to have.

We can go back—and I've got pages of quotes here from members of the opposition, including the Leader of the Opposition and the then shadow minister, indicating back as early as January 2021, or back in 2020, that a greater diversity of vaccinations should have been procured. On 3 January 2021 Chris Bowen said, 'The government needs to get more vaccines out as quickly as possible, that is the key.' In January 2021 Chris Bowen indicated that, 'Scott Morrison told Australians that we were first in the queue for COVID-19 vaccines. He wasn't telling the truth then.' It is absolutely clear that on many, many occasions the risks associated with putting all of our eggs in one basket were highlighted by members of the opposition and that those claims weren't given sufficient attention. What we see now is the result of that inaction.

If we go to March 2021 Phil Gaetjens, the head of the Prime Minister's department, said, 'Logistical issues and the slow pace of the rollout are just noise. In fact, there is a very strong signal that the vaccine is going okay.' So, when it should have been clear that this vaccine rollout was way behind schedule, when it should have been clear that we didn't have sufficient diversity of vaccines, we were getting strong signals from the top of this government that there was no problem. Even to this day, there's far too little acceptance that supply side constraints have largely arisen as a result of insufficient diversity of vaccines. It is this dual problem of an insufficient rigor in our quarantine program and an insufficient diversity in vaccines which is directly creating an unnecessary exposure to lockdowns. It is those lockdowns which are now causing so much economic hardship and so much human misery.

Again, it is the government's own documentation which shows the direct link between lockdowns and the economic prospects of this country. The government's own budget papers point to the fact that the number of lockdowns one assumes has a direct impact on economic growth prospects and on employment levels. Of course, there are far more impacts on the community than just GDP numbers and employment levels; it's the human toll that so many speakers have talked about—so many speakers from Sydney, so many speakers from other parts of New South Wales, so many speakers from Queensland. As I've indicated, I can empathise, and people from my community can empathise, with what people are going through.

What makes it all the more galling is that all of this suffering was so avoidable. Lessons should have been learned from what other parts of the country went through, what my electorate went through, and lessons should have been learned from the warnings that members of the opposition gave, that the shadow minister gave for months and months late in 2020 and that the Leader of the Opposition gave. We find now that our economy is experiencing $2 billion a week in costs as a result of lockdowns.

As speakers on this side have indicated, we will support this bill. We will not stand in the way of measures of support that are so needed by the community. We will also, of course, be constructive. As the Leader of the Opposition has indicated, we have developed proposals which we believe supplement, add to and complement measures that the government is putting in place, which include the $300 payment to incentivise people to get the vaccine. It beggars belief that this government rules out, out of hand, dismissively, constructive suggestions as if it's got everything under control, when we're ranked towards the bottom of the OECD with little prospect of that ranking moving up. As the Leader of the Opposition has pointed out on a number of occasions, incentives, whether they be financial or otherwise, lie at the heart of many governments' vaccination programs. So we will support this bill. We will also make constructive proposals when it comes to what else the government should be doing. We hope, as the Leader of the Opposition indicates, that, like with other measures such as wage subsidies, the government eventually come around and accept that proposal, even if they need to do so after a gap in time and even if they eventually need to claim that it was their idea.

But we can't forget that what's underlying the current problems we face, what's underlying our current need to go into lockdowns and, unfortunately, what may require other parts of our country to go into lockdowns in the future is the fact that we still don't have fit-for-purpose quarantine systems. It is the fact that we still don't have a vaccination program rolling out with sufficient speed to give us the coverage so that we can avoid lockdowns. We see a government that is still reacting to proposals from state governments all too slowly. We still see a government that doesn't have sufficient urgency.

There have been all too many analogies with the Olympics this week and the fact that we lionise and celebrate the achievements of so many Australians overseas who are pushing themselves to the limit. This government should be doing the same. This government should be pushing themselves to the limit in their service of this country, because we are facing a national emergency. Our country rightly celebrates what our athletes are achieving overseas. We should expect the same excellence and the same urgency from our government with something that is so important. Nothing is as important in terms of the welfare of our people at the moment. So we support this bill, but we need to see so much more being done. We need to acknowledge that the reason for this bill is government inaction when it comes to their two key jobs: quarantine and vaccination rollout. The government need to urgently address those underlying problems and not just deal with the symptoms.

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