Fiona Martin (Reid, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Industry, Science and Technology. Will the minister please outline to the House how the Morrison government is backing our manufacturers to deliver a COVID-19 vaccine to drive our health and economic recovery?

Karen Andrews (McPherson, Liberal Party, Minister for Industry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for her question. From day 1 our government recognised that this was both a health and an economic crisis. We know that finding a vaccine is important in order to provide the certainty that the Australian community needs, but also that businesses need, and that's why our government has invested around about $360 million in support of COVID-19 research and development so far. And we've announced $1.7 billion to secure early access to over 84.8 million doses of the vaccine if proven safe and effective.

As a government, we are increasingly optimistic about the prospect of vaccine delivery as early as the first quarter of next year. Health experts have assured us that we are on track to start rolling out the vaccine. As industry minister, I'm very pleased to say that over 90 per cent of those doses will actually be produced right here in Australia. We have some amazing manufacturers here and those firms are capable of making various vaccines and various treatments. In fact, many of us will already have received a flu vaccine, potentially, from one of those suppliers. We know that the road to manufacturing vaccines is complex and we have to be prepared for numerous possibilities. Vaccines generally take a number of years to develop and test, but the brightest minds across the world are doing all that they can to develop and test a vaccine, so that we have one ready as soon as we possibly can. With hundreds of vaccine candidates being explored simultaneously around the world governments do remain confident that there will be a vaccine. We don't know as yet what the form of that vaccine is going to be, and for that reason we are working to make sure that we are covering a range of possibilities so that we can produce and deliver in the shortest possible time frame.

I'm pleased to say that the CSIRO, Australia's leading science agency, is taking a key role in the development and the manufacture of a vaccine here in Australia. It really is a credit to them and to our scientists and researchers across Australia for the work that they are doing in vaccine and treatment research and development.

We have consistently said that we must learn to live and work in the COVID environment in which we find ourselves, and that's why it is so important that we all work together to make sure that we keep our economy open and that we don't move to keep borders closed. (Time expired)