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

[by video link] Some of the costs of this government's vaccination rollout failures can be quantified but some are unquantifiable. Some of the consequences are already known but others are yet to be known. We know that the current lockdown in Sydney is costing hundreds of millions of dollars a day and billions of dollars a week. We know that this cost is hitting the pockets of Australian businesses and workers. Meanwhile, Australians in lockdown, in isolation, are suffering deeply from the intangible costs, whether it's the owner of a small business watching their life's work and dreams evaporate or the grandparents who can't hold a newborn grandchild in their arms.

Australia shouldn't be in this situation. Australia should and could be in a better position than it is now, had the Prime Minister done his jobs. The Prime Minister had two jobs this year—the speedy effective rollout of the vaccine, and quarantine—and he's failed at both. It wasn't the Prime Minister's job to get Mathias Cormann elected to the OECD, though you could be forgiven for thinking that it was. While the Prime Minister made over 50 phone calls on behalf of Mr Cormann, he didn't once pick up the phone to the head of Pfizer. While Mr Cormann found himself at the top of the OECD, Australia found itself at the bottom of the OECD ladder for the vaccination rollout.

Mistake after mistake has been made by this government. We should have had greater supply of more vaccines, including Pfizer. We should be further down the vaccination path than we are. But we are where we are. We can't undo the mistakes of this government, but we can get out of this pandemic if we work together constructively—but only if our leaders show maturity and humility in considering constructive suggestions where they are offered. Australia must get out of the situation it is now in. There is no greater priority. Labor has made and will continue to make constructive suggestions to get our communities, like mine, through this pandemic and out the other side.

Labor's four-point COVID plan is clear: we need to fix the vaccine rollout now by getting more supply and we need more walk-in vaccination clinics. At present, there are several of these clinics established in Western Sydney, but none in my electorate of Greenway. I have made representations to the New South Wales health minister, urging him to expand the number of walk-in vaccination clinics in Greenway to help make it easier for local residents to get vaccinated without needing to make an appointment. We also need a proper conversation about how to incentivise vaccinations. Labor has put forward a constructive suggestion of cash payments to help get to the 80 per cent vaccination target as quickly as possible while providing a much-needed cash injection for our economy, and families and young people doing it tough right now. I urge the Prime Minister to put hot-headed politicking aside and to take a calm look at this suggestion in the national interest.

There's also an urgent need to address vaccination hesitancy in the community. We need to stop the confusing advice around the AstraZeneca vaccine. Inconsistency on this message isn't helpful for members of my community. We need clear and timely information provision. This means clamping down on misinformation, as well as making credible information available. Here, we need a real plan to get information into our diverse multicultural communities. In-language translations across the federal and New South Wales government websites are patchy and inconsistent. A quarter of Australia's 73,000 Tamil speakers reside in the eight local government areas of concern in Western Sydney now subject to COVID-19 rules and restrictions, including in my electorate of Greenway. And yet it's easier to find COVID-19 information in Icelandic than in Tamil on the New South Wales health website and the federal government's COVID vaccination eligibility checker on the health department's website doesn't include Tamil as a language option. As I speak today, the eligibility checker is available in only 15 languages and it is most unfortunate that Tamil is not one of them.

We also need to build our mRNA manufacturing capacity. This is something Australia can do. Western Sydney is a manufacturing hub; aside from the health benefits, my electorate would surely benefit from the jobs this would bring.

Most Australians in lockdown are doing the right thing at great personal and professional sacrifice, but they need to know how and when this will end. They need to know where the finish line is, that by staying home and getting vaccinated there's a road map out of this. That's why Labor is offering constructive suggestions, because people need and expect a clear plan and a light at the end of this tunnel.

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