Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for the question. I think that that date of last August as the commencement of lobbying is about correct. Of course, it was in December of last year that we commenced the process of putting together a business case to inform the policy going forward, so that this facility can be commissioned. When you look at that timing, Member for Chifley, the mRNA vaccines were first approved for human use in Australia on 25 January 2021—that's 25 January of this year. Our government was lobbied in August last year. It commissioned the business case in December of last year, and that was an absolutely necessary premise and starting point for a process that then led to the approach to market which was recently finalised and which we are now analysing the responses to. I think, indeed, in the article that the individuals were quoted from, they also talk about a feasibility study being the starting point. I think that the Research Australia chief executive talked about the need to start with a feasibility study, which is what we did—a business case—so that we could firstly understand exactly what would be a reasonable ask of the taxpayer.

This is a scientific endeavour and a commercial endeavour, and those two parts of this quite complicated issue and problem have to be put together. There are, and there will be, frustrations that things don't happen more quickly, but this is a very complicated scientific endeavour and commercial endeavour. It has to be sustainable into the future. It has to produce mRNA vaccines for future pandemics and viruses—potentially, COVID boosters, potentially aligned also to flu vaccines, potentially also for other therapeutic treatments such as for cancer and heart diseases. We are taking a considered, informed approach. There is possibly one way that you could do it quicker, and that is that you could take the same sort of approach to this complicated potentially large expenditure of taxpayers' money that the Labor Party have taken to a $6 billion policy and that is a 'take that sugar hit' approach and just spend $6 billion without even discussing it with your own caucus.

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