Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

[by video link] Labor supports the National Health Amendment (COVID-19) Bill 2021. Labor has been a constructive opposition throughout this entire pandemic, as could be seen with our support of the JobKeeper measures that went through this parliament early last year, and we will not stand in the way of this money going through now for vaccines. But we would not be doing our job as an opposition if we did not point out the government's manifest failures through this pandemic and make suggestions as to how it could do better.

The government has failed at every turn when it comes to the vaccine rollout—an absolute failure at every turn. We all remember the Prime Minister saying that we were at the front of the queue, promising Australians that we were at the front of the queue. But we weren't: more than a hundred nations across the world were ahead of Australia. We heard the Prime Minister say, 'It's not a race,' but it's always been a race. It's always been a race, and Australia has been losing that race in the vaccine rollout. It's not a vaccine rollout but a vaccine 'strollout'.

Labor is pleased that the vaccines are starting to arrive, but there is so much more that needs to be done. Not for the first time, the Prime Minister has been wrong, and so very wrong, and it is Australians who are paying the price for his many failures. We have one of the slowest rollouts in the developed world, and all because our Prime Minister did not secure a Pfizer deal until the end of 2020. He had the opportunity to sit down with Pfizer early last year and make the deal, just like many other countries and other world leaders did. But our Prime Minister sat on his hands and, as a result, our country, our people, our nurses, our doctors and those Australians who are suffering in ICU wards are paying the price.

Now we're seeing the Prime Minister change his tune completely. He has gone from, 'It's not a race,' to, 'It's more important how you finish the race.' That's what he said yesterday in the parliament: 'The important thing is how we finish the race.' That's cold comfort to the workers and businesses who have lost their incomes due to lockdowns that simply would not have happened over the past few months if the Prime Minister had simply done his job. It's cold comfort to the many Tasmanians in my electorate who are seeing their livelihoods crumble around them because this Prime Minister said that it's not important how you start it, it's only important how you finish. In the meantime, in that gap, livelihoods and incomes are crumbling.

In Tasmania we're seeing increasing pressure on the tourism and aviation industries, and there's no support for these vital industries. Just because Tasmania is not in lockdown, the Prime Minister has not made support available to the suffering industries, workers and businesses that are directly impacted by flight cancellations because of the lockdowns on the mainland. They're receiving no support at all. That's a great failure by this Prime Minister during this pandemic and it's all because this Prime Minister cannot keep his promises.

Here are a few more broken promises for the record. He promised that four million Australians would be vaccinated by the end of March 2021, but by the end of March only 600,000 doses had been administered—a massive failure, just 15 per cent of the Prime Minister's vaccination pledge. This is what this Prime Minister does: he makes a big announcement—he gets in front of all the cameras and all the microphones, and has all the flags behind him, and he makes the big announcement. Then he never keeps the promise, and he just moves on. He just keeps the caravan moving on. He doesn't want to talk about the past, he doesn't want to talk about the failures and he doesn't want to be held responsible for his own words and his own broken promises. It's a complete failure of leadership by this Prime Minister.

Aged-care workers were promised that they would be vaccinated. Only 45,000 aged-care residents, let alone workers, were fully vaccinated by 10 April—chalk it up to all the broken promises. This Prime Minister has abandoned plans to provide vaccines directly to aged-care workers, didn't sign the right deal with the providers, and on 30 June just one-third of staff in aged-care homes were fully vaccinated, putting themselves and the people they care for at risk. At every turn this Prime Minister is failing the test. He's failing the leadership test on the vaccine rollout during this pandemic, and he should be held responsible for this failure of leadership.

Before I finish, I would like briefly to go to the words of the member for Oxley, who quite rightly condemned the actions and the words of the member for Hughes and the member for Dawson. The Prime Minister saved the parliamentary career of the member for Hughes. The only reason the member for Hughes is in the parliament today is that the Prime Minister saved his preselection, and now he's the leader of the United Australia Party, which is spreading vaccination lies, vaccination rumours and vaccination untruths across the country. He's being aided and abetted by the member for Dawson, who sits on the government backbench. He is directly responsible to his party room in the coalition and by proxy to the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister must show leadership and deal with the member for Dawson. If he fails to do so, he will be shown up for the hollow man that we all know he is.

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