Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. On 19 August the Prime Minister announced Australia had a deal with the drug company AstraZeneca to secure a COVID-19 vaccine, but AstraZeneca said there was no deal and a local manufacturer had not been found. Why do the Prime Minister's announcements never match the reality?

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

The shadow minister for health has a habit of coming up with all sorts of sledges that always end up proving not to be true, and I'll ask the Minister for Health to update further.

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Unfortunately for the shadow minister for health, he neglected the second part of the discussion that day, where AstraZeneca actually wrote to the paper in question and rejected their statement, reaffirmed that which they'd said next to the Prime Minister and noted that they had struck an agreement with the government and that this is the first and the most important stage and is a written agreement between the government and AstraZeneca.

I think the shadow minister will have a very difficult time in the future when he looks back on the fact that we will have delivered whole-of-population vaccines for Australians. That is the future to come—that we will have delivered that. We have a written agreement with AstraZeneca. We have signed that agreement. It's my name on that agreement. And, as the person who had worked it with them, as one of the team which had the authority of the Expenditure Review Committee to do that, we have put Australia in a position where we are now at the forefront of those countries which will have access to vaccines.

AstraZeneca's is not the only vaccine, I would also mention. We are working with a variety of other companies around the world. We are working, in terms of Australian manufacturing and production, with CSL. So what we will see is that the Australian population will be given access to whole-of-population vaccines, on a free basis, which is one of the fundamental pathways for the road out for Australians. So we have containment and we have capacity. The ultimate capacity is that vaccination. It happens that we are in a fortunate position because we have Australian manufacturing capacity on top of our access. Indeed, we also have, within Australia, an over $350 million COVID vaccine preparedness and treatment program. That includes the investments in the University of Queensland molecular clamp—a $5 million investment—but also $25 million of additional funding for clinical trials, which was announced only in the last 10 days.

So all of these things have come together as part of our capacity structure: primary care, aged care, hospitals and vaccines. In particular, we have a written agreement with AstraZeneca, which is the first and most important part. We have advanced negotiations with other companies. And we have production capability, as well as the capacity to be part of the Gavi COVAX international— (Time expired)