Michelle Rowland (Greenway, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Communications) Share this | Hansard source

[by video link] I rise to speak on the Treasury Laws Amendment (COVID-19 Economic Response No. 2) Bill 2021. Labor has been calling for more financial assistance from this government and supports getting money out to communities in lockdown, such as mine. So Labor will be supporting this bill. Along with my Labor colleagues, I have been calling on this government to do more to support the millions of Australians impacted by the outbreak of the COVID-19 delta variant. Western Sydney, including my electorate of Greenway, has been hit particularly hard by this lockdown and by the failures of this Prime Minister. Until recently, we were in the perverse situation where this lockdown was hitting Western Sydney so much harder than last year and the impact on small businesses was so much greater than last year yet the amount of federal government support on offer was actually less. This bill will make several changes to implement support for communities in lockdown. These changes are of course welcome but they are also a concession from the government that, once again, they got the support packages wrong. Unfortunately, they were dragged to it kicking and screaming, and it's too late for too many local businesses in my electorate. Getting support right is critical to ensuring workers are still employed and businesses are still around on the other side of a lockdown. Labor know this absolutely and, though the government had to be dragged kicking and screaming to this point, we will support this bill.

As I said, the residents and small businesses of Western Sydney are paying the price for this Prime Minister's failures. Eighteen months into this pandemic they are paying the price for his failures on vaccines, quarantine and timely financial assistance. As a result of this Prime Minister's sheer incompetence—incompetence that is costing the economy billions of dollars each week—residents in my electorate of Greenway are paying the price. Health is at risk, lives are at risk, livelihoods are at risk and small businesses are at risk. The economy is bleeding billions each week. As I travel through the northern end of my electorate in particular, there is an eerie silence on building sites which were once occupied by tradies, where homes are under construction but are surrounded by fences and locked up.

As I said, this Prime Minister had to be dragged kicking and screaming to do the right thing by the residents of Western Sydney but, unfortunately, for too many of them that has come too late. It is typical of this Prime Minister, who doesn't take responsibility for anything—who doesn't hold a hose and who said the vaccination rollout wasn't a race. For so many small businesses, the additional assistance that's on offer has in some cases come too late and in other cases is simply not enough.

It's also typical of this Prime Minister to show he is completely out of touch with reality and loose with the truth. This is a national emergency, and it needs national leadership that we are not getting. Instead we have a Prime Minister who went around saying the vaccination rollout wasn't a race and then attempted to deny as much in parliament today. We all know that he dragged his feet on the vaccination schedule. We all know that, despite his promise, he failed to get all stranded Australians home by last Christmas. We all know that he has offered incentives for vaccinations and then denied doing so. These empty words and lies are not helping anyone. They are not helping any of the small businesses I represent. They are not helping any of the families in Greenway. People need help—real action, not empty promises or this Prime Minister's delusion and denial.

Mr Deputy Speaker, what did the Prime Minister answer during question time today when I asked him if he still commends the New South Wales Premier for resisting an earlier lockdown, as he did on the Sunrise program on 24 June?

What did Australia's Prime Minister say today when I asked him about the hundreds of thousands of working parents across Western Sydney, including in my electorate, who are bracing themselves for remote schooling with no end date? I'll tell you what he did. He spoke about himself. That's right: Australia's fully vaccinated Prime Minister, who doesn't live in Western Sydney, made it all about himself. The people of Western Sydney need a competent Prime Minister who is in touch with their struggles, not someone completely out of touch with their everyday reality.

One area in which this government demonstrates that it is completely out of touch with the needs of Western Sydney is in the provision of translations of COVID information in the languages that are spoken in Western Sydney. In the Blacktown local government area alone, there are some 180 different languages spoken. And it's not just about getting information translated; it's about socialising that information as well. It needs to reach people who need to understand the rules and the vaccination options available to them. I represent an electorate where nearly half of the households speak a language other than English at home. When I look up some of the information on publicly available government websites, it is actually easier to find specific information in Icelandic than it is in Tamil. This should not be happening. We need to ensure that everyone in our community understands the rules and can access information as readily as possible.

It is the case that the vast majority of local residents want to do the right thing, but the reality is that some of these rules are extremely confusing in terms of how they apply in practice, and there is the fact that they have been changing so rapidly. I held a community Zoom meeting last week with hundreds of local residents and there were very practical questions asked, but there was also a high level of confusion in some areas, and these were from people who are predominantly proficient in English. It is hard enough for native English speakers to keep track of the evolving COVID safety messages, let alone Australians for whom English is their second language. Unfortunately, as I said today, neither the New South Wales nor federal government health websites are consistent or comprehensive when it comes to the provision of in-language translations about COVID. The vaccine eligibility checker, for example, isn't translated into the range of languages you would expect it to be given the spread of COVID that has occurred in Western Sydney. As I said, people want to do the right thing. Everyone is grateful to their neighbours for doing the right thing. No-one wants to be locked down and be under the restrictions that we currently have. But, to ensure compliance and to encourage vaccinations, governments at least need to ensure the right information reaches the right people at the right time, so I call on the better use of the resources of government needed to ensure consistent information is given to our diverse communities. I acknowledge the efforts of many local champions in my area with whom I continue to work on outreach and getting the messages out there.

Labor haven't been calling on just more financial assistance. We have been calling for more vaccination support—not only more vaccines but also more vaccination clinics. I welcome the recent rollout of walk-in vaccination clinics offering COVID-19 AstraZeneca vaccines to everyone aged 18 and over. At present and according to the New South Wales government website, there are several walk-in clinics established in Western Sydney. However, there are no walk-in clinics currently listed in the electorate of Greenway, including in the southern end of my electorate, which has been particularly adversely affected by COVID. I have written constructively to the New South Wales health minister urging him to expand the number of walk-in vaccination clinics in my area to help make it easier for my residents to get vaccinated without needing to make an appointment. I note that, according to an article in the Sydney Morning Herald today, fewer than one in 10 are fully vaccinated in parts of Australia. I quote:

Sydney's south-west, at the epicentre of the latest outbreak, has one of the lowest rates of fully vaccinated people in the state ...

Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, social disadvantage is a key driver at this outcome. This is part of the reason why Labor has announced its plan to give $300 to every Australian vaccinated by December. There is no doubt that incentives can play a role in getting Australia's vaccination rates up and our lives and our economy going again. Yet this Prime Minister decries this constructive suggestion from Labor, saying it's wasteful. That's right: the same Prime Minister who delivered $13 billion of JobKeeper payments to businesses whose earnings went up, rather than down, during the pandemic, engineered massive rorting of taxpayer funds through sports rorts and car park rorts and thinks paying $30 million for airport land worth $3 million is okay got up in the parliament today and decried the idea of cash incentives for vaccinations as wasteful.

The Prime Minister oversees a government that failed to secure enough vaccines, talked down the race that we are in to vaccinate our population and has failed to provide consistent and comprehensive in-language translations about vaccination eligibility in the languages for our diverse communities who need it. He sees fit to talk down the need for financial incentives for Australians to get vaccinated as soon as possible. Australians whose pockets are hurting just as much as their emotions are hurting are far and wide. We need the vaccination schedule to be done much faster. Australians are worth it. It is worth getting our tradies back on the job in Western Sydney. It is worth our children being able to see their friends and socialise and learn as they are used to doing. It is worth being able to conduct a working day that is actually conducive to productivity and efficiency.

In my concluding comments, I would like to note that my parliamentary colleague the member for Fenner—and I'm so pleased he's in the chamber—has pointed out this government's historic $13 billion in JobKeeper waste:

Some of those big firms that got cheques they didn't need have handed them back. Dominoes, Iluka and Toyota are among them, and together they have collectively handed back around $225 million dollars across 25 firms. But that is a small drop in the bucket of what I'd estimate to be $13 billion of taxpayer money that went to firms whose earnings went up during the pandemic, rather than down.

I conclude by saying: Australians are worth it. We are worth getting our lives back to normal as soon as possible, and the pathway to that is getting us vaccinated as quickly as possible.

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