Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

We received some interim advice from ATAGI last Friday, and that was a key issue discussed at the meeting of premiers, chief ministers and me. This Friday, we'll be presented with the plan from Lieutenant General Frewen, which will follow through on our agreement last week that we need to move as soon as possible to have it completed before the end of terms this year to ensure that they are vaccinated.

The short answer is that the vaccine supply continues to increase week by week and we will be able to vaccinate those aged between 12 and 15 alongside the rest of the population in the weeks and months ahead. And that is exactly what we're planning to do. I know this is very important. My own daughter is 12. I actually had this conversation with her today. They'll be going forward and getting their vaccines as soon as that can be arranged.

There is a big job to do with the vaccine program across the whole country. The advice that we have received from the Doherty institute—we here in this place all know how magnificent the Doherty institute is, but I remind those who may be watching: this is the institute that was the first to reproduce the COVID-19 virus in a lab and share it with the rest of the world. This is not just any scientific institute; this is one of the world's leading institutes when it comes to these issues.

Their advice has also been very clear that we must continue to maintain the pace of vaccination across the rest of the adult population. And one of the best protections there is for children—not just those aged between 12 and 15, as the member would know, given his medical experience, but also those under 12, for whom there is not a vaccine—is the broader immunisation of the community and particularly of those in the parent age groups. So we'll continue to put priorities across all of those fronts. As I'm sure the health minister would be able to tell you, we are already vaccinating those aged 12 to 15 who have particular other conditions, who are Indigenous or who are living in remote areas. That decision was taken some time ago and, to ensure that we could move on that, we have been looking carefully at what the outcomes have been of the vaccination of 12- to 15-year-olds in other parts of the world. That's why we await that advice, but the interim advice was very favourable. I'm sure that every parent of children in that age group would want to know, just like when they're getting their normal immunisations at any other time, that our appropriate regulatory authorities have given it the tick.

The doses, as we continue to see, including those extra million doses we were able to get out of Poland, are adding to the great vaccination effort, which is hitting marks in this country over a seven-day period that exceed even those achieved at the height of the US's and the UK's vaccination programs.

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