Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This is terrific, isn't it? We're 18 months into a pandemic and here we have a bill, the National Health Amendment (COVID-19) Bill 2021, giving the minister for health the power to spend money to go and buy vaccines and booster shots. Three cheers! Lack of money is not the issue; it has never been the issue. Last year this parliament gave the finance minister a $40 billion advance—a little kitty in case anything needed to be done. The problem here is incompetence and a lack of urgency. That's what we've seen now for 18 months.

Australians, including those right across my home city of Melbourne and the state of Victoria, and indeed in most of the country, are sick of the never-ending lockdowns. Australians want the lockdowns to end, and they want to be safe. The lockdowns are the Prime Minister's fault, make no mistake, because he didn't order enough vaccines and he didn't build purpose-built quarantine. But the only way for these two things to be achieved, for the lockdowns to end and for tens of thousands of citizens not to then die from this deadly disease, is if we have enough vaccines.

By any measure, Australian vaccine rollout has been a shambles. I want to read some quotes:

… the biggest failure of public administration I can recall.

And:

… a colossal failure.

And:

… a phenomenal failure …

That wasn't a Labor person. That was the previous Liberal Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, talking about the government's shambles of a rollout. I have another quote:

… the reason we are locked down, which is so frustrating when so many other parts of the world are opening up, is simply because our government failed to buy enough vaccines.

That was also the previous Liberal Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull. That's the commentary the government's getting from its friends. The incompetence and failure are bad enough, but what is even worse is the Prime Minister's abject refusal to do his job, take responsibility and face up to his failure. At every turn we've had 18 months of spin, gaslighting of Australians and blaming of everyone else. 'It's not me. It's the states' fault. They were supposed to do that.' 'It's not me. It's Labor. They're undermining our vaccine rollout.' Never mind that his own backbench is spreading misinformation day after day. Half the government senators seem to be in on it. 'It's the man on the moon. It's not me. It's someone else.' Now he has Lieutenant General Frewen to point at when something goes wrong.

The Prime Minister told Australians we were at the front of the queue. A more ridiculous, untrue statement I could not think of. At the end of June this year we were last in the OECD, last in the developed world and 113th in the world on vaccine rollout. The Prime Minister said only yesterday, 'We've overcome the problems. It's all on track.' We're still near last in the developed world, while the rest of the world is opening up. Try telling people in Melbourne, who, hoping for a cancellation, get there at 6 am to get a jab of Pfizer so they can protect themselves and their families, that it's all going really well.

This is the second winter that my home city has lived through a lockdown, but this time it would have been avoidable if the bloke who sits in the chair over there on the other side had ordered enough vaccines. He said it wasn't a race, and then he blamed Brendan Murphy and pretended he hadn't said that. It was always a race—to save lives, to save livelihoods, to get this country opened and to stop the lockdowns. People are sick of lockdowns. They're suffering because of this Prime Minister's failure to run and win that race.

The race was at two levels, of course. There was supply—you've got to have enough vaccines. He didn't order the Pfizer until last December. He didn't get a diverse supply of vaccines, as is best practice—four to six different types. He put all his eggs in one basket. Other countries had placed their orders in July last year. He didn't get the order in till the day before Christmas. We were at the back of the queue, and you don't have to be a rocket scientist to know that Australia, frankly, being a small country, is a small market. We don't have much leverage with big pharma. We had to be at the very front of the queue to get our place.

The government have been stingy on vaccines and stingy on quarantine and, frankly, because of their stinginess last year, they've blown tens of billions of dollars in unnecessary economic support that we wouldn't have had to pay. There's tens of billions of dollars being loaded onto the national debt by the incompetent geniuses over there that the next generation are going to be asked to repay. There's also the damage to the mental health of people who are suffering through lockdowns and living alone. There have been record numbers of calls to Lifeline, our national suicide prevention hotline.

The Prime Minister has missed every target he has set. There were to be four million vaccinations by the end of March. He got 600,000. All aged-care residents and nurses were to be vaccinated by Easter. He did mean last Easter, not next Easter. He still hasn't met that target. Now he's given up on targets. There's no trajectory; we just have horizons. Horizons are something you never actually get to. So I ask the Prime Minister: when are we going to get to this 80 per cent target? What's the magical date when freedom day and all these good things over the horizon might arrive? He's not prepared to commit, because all he wants to do is fight with the states and territories when it suits his 24-hour news cycle. You've actually got to sit down and get on with the states and territories to get the distribution right.

What about teenagers? Parents are crying out for vaccinations. What about booster shots? The Prime Minister will be due for his booster shot in two months. Is he going to put himself at the front of that queue while the rest of Australia is still waiting? Frankly, Australians are dangerously exposed because of his vaccination failure and his quarantine failure. People in Sydney are now dying. Gladys Berejiklian said only yesterday, 30 August, that October is going to be the worst month for ICU.

Mr Deputy Speaker Freelander, you're a paediatrician. I know you live and breathe this. It's your colleagues who are putting their own lives and their families' safety at risk to save people's lives because he did not do his job. Do not expect Australians to forgive or forget this failure. We will get through this regardless of the incompetence of the Prime Minister and the government and their criminal, lethal negligence. He wants people to now forget his failure and pretend he's for freedom. He is the gaslighter in chief. So, yes, we will do it together. The Minister for Health and Aged Care can have the money to buy more vaccines and buy booster shots if he says he needs it now. But this government's failure cannot be forgiven.

See this speech in context