John Alexander (Bennelong, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

[by video link] Firstly, I would like to recognise the member for Macarthur for his most worthwhile contribution. It is a reminder that we have good people on both sides.

Last week I spoke here about Treasury laws amendments in one of those small but essential bills which ensure that the country keeps running and that ring in changes slowly and as needed. It was the sort of bill which keeps the lights on and really goes unnoticed. Today we are talking about a bill, the National Health Amendment (COVID-19) Bill 2021, that is the opposite. There is possibly no more important bill that we will discuss this month than this bill, because it gives the Department of Health the funds it needs to keep fighting COVID-19. This bill will have implications which will be seen across Australia on a daily basis, and, hopefully, it will bring an end to this debilitating and life-changing pandemic.

After 18 months of uncertainty, optimism, pessimism and more uncertainty, we find ourselves back in lockdown. I'm giving my contribution while I am seated in my office in Epping in the locked down Parramatta LGA. We have been locked down now for exactly two months, and it looks like there's another month on the way. This lockdown is hitting us hard. Businesses have been up against the wall. Even those which had the capital to cope with one shock have been dealing with constant restrictions and uncertainty now for 18 months. For every business that struggles, many individuals are affected. Government payments have allowed many businesses to keep people on; but the pain has been real for people with less work, less money and uncertainty about how long this will last. The strong community spirit we have around Ryde and Bennelong remains strong, with people still doing what they can to make sure their neighbours, friends and family are doing okay. But without the regular calendar of local events, sports, school fetes, and even the connections we make while we're doing our shopping, our human connections and our sense of community suffer. I have no doubt that this will bounce back when freedoms return, but it doesn't make it easier right now.

However, if the picture is bleak, the light at the end of the tunnel we saw in May is still visible if we look. Vaccination rates are higher than we've ever seen in New South Wales, which recently set world records for the speed of the vaccination take up. It was only a handful of days ago that we celebrated 60 per cent with their first dose, and now we're already at 66 per cent. Last week over 800,000 people in New South Wales received a jab, which is incredible. At this rate we'll reach 70 per cent in the next few days and 80 per cent won't be far away after that. From there we'll only be four weeks away from the double dosage at that level.

We will be through this soon enough, but to do that we need the government to have the ability to purchase vaccines, invest in treatments and buy the things we need to fight this disease. And for that we need this bill. Currently, in order to spend money to fight COVID, the health minister receives funding through appropriation bills, which are not frequent or flexible enough for the government to respond as necessary during a pandemic. The unpredictable nature of vaccine requirements, development and availability has made it difficult to predict funding requirements within the traditional budget process. Essentially, COVID variants don't respect time lines of budget or MYEFO processes.

Just today we saw the Prime Minister announce 500,000 vaccine swaps with Singapore, that sees us buy their vaccines now and sell them ours in December, when we will need them less. This is a good deal for both parties and is increasingly the way things are being done, as we have seen previously with our deal with Poland. But these deals can't be easily foreseen and are often trades made in the light of changing developments. This is why we need the health minister to have these powers. Additionally, our spending on vaccines would be hitting a wall in general, pending our acquisition of COVID products after this point, just when we'll be needing to buy boosters or whatever we need for the next strain. This bill means we can keep buying what we need.

We can see the light at the end of the tunnel through vaccines, and this bill will keep those vaccines coming into Australia for as long as we need them. There could be nothing more important than us passing this bill this week.

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