Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development) Share this | Hansard source

Over 18 months into this pandemic, it feels like we are still living through 2020. Cities are in lockdown, state borders are shut, Australians are stranded overseas, airlines are grounded and a much-reduced parliament is passing emergency financial support bills. And, most tragically, intensive care units are filling up and Australians are again dying from COVID-19—today a 27-year-old.

For Australians who gave up so much over the last 18 months, this is one of the greatest frustrations we have with this government. Countless Australians lost their jobs. We homeschooled our kids, we stayed at home and we didn't visit our parents. We all did it to stop the spread of this virus, trusting that, if we did our bit, the government would do theirs. But this government did not do its job, and it has failed. All that good work we did—the head start we built on the rest of the world, the economy we kept running—was squandered because this Prime Minister didn't think the vaccine rollout was a race. How completely stupid can you get?

Only 15 per cent of the whole population of Australians are fully vaccinated. The vast majority of Australians are just as vulnerable to COVID today as they were 12 months ago, if not more so, because of the delta strain. Because of that, we are still facing lockdowns. It is because of this government's failure that Sydney and Brisbane are today in lockdown, while millions of other Australians live under restrictions, and we have Victoria and South Australia only just coming out of lockdown, and who knows what's about to happen in the west?

The BCA has estimated that the Sydney lockdown alone costs $257 million per day or $1.8 billion a week. Treasury modelling yesterday revealed that harsh lockdowns could cost the national economy up to $3.2 billion per week. That is the price that Australian workers and small businesses are paying for this Prime Minister's incompetence, arrogance and hubris. This week we saw 2½ thousand aviation workers stood down for at least two months, if not more, and left confused by the support offered by this government. Just this morning, we had the Deputy Prime Minister having to clarify to newspapers that Qantas ground handlers could receive support. This is despite him saying, when he announced the scheme on Monday, 'We're talking about pilots and hostesses—not people on the ground.' Memo to the DPM: they're not called 'hostesses' anymore; they're actually called 'cabin crew'. Now it turns out that he's talking about some people on the ground but not others. What on earth is going on with this government? This is chaos when it comes to people understanding what their entitlements might be and whether or not they're going to get support.

At the centre of the government's failures is, of course, the vaccine rollout. The government promised four million vaccinations by the end of March, six million vaccinations by 10 May, all aged-care and disability-care workers to be vaccinated by Easter, and every Australian to be fully vaccinated by October. That is what the government promised. Far from being the envy of the world, the Morrison government is now being held up internationally as an example of what not to do and as an example of how countries like ours that got complacent about our early success in keeping the virus out are now struggling because of failed vaccine rollouts and leaders whose hubris led them to believe that it was not a race. We are now an example internationally of what not to do. The health challenges and the economic challenges can only be overcome by vaccination and a decent, fit-for-purpose quarantine system. The economic and social consequences of failing to do so are writ large for all to see.

For eight long years, this government has overseen record low wages growth and chronically high underemployment. We've seen them preside over aged-care crises, an energy crisis, a housing crisis and a skills crisis. We've seen them fail to actually deal with this pandemic and fail to actually roll out a decent vaccine program. This is a race; it was always a race. It's a race for our health. It's a race for businesses not to be stranded by the Prime Minister. It's a race for the country's economic and social future.

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