Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a difficult thing to be here while my home state is in a five-day lockdown and it is heartbreaking for all the Melburnians and Victorians who have endured so much throughout this pandemic. But our city have done something remarkable—they have already overcome the second wave—and I am absolutely confident that Victorians will overcome this current outbreak.

But this virus is becoming harder to manage. We've seen outbreaks in quarantine in Adelaide, in Brisbane, in Perth, twice in Sydney and now, of course, in Melbourne. All of these cities bar Sydney have been in three- to five-day lockdowns with these highly infectious new strains of the virus. We've seen outbreaks in New Zealand, Taiwan and Vietnam. Countries with some of the most outstanding responses to the coronavirus are struggling to contain the mutated version of this virus.

This pandemic is not over, but the federal government are ending their support for businesses. They're ending JobKeeper for Victorian businesses. They've done a lot of press conferences on rolling out the vaccine, but they haven't done one simple thing: actually roll out the vaccine. I'm losing count of how many press conferences the minister and the Prime Minister have done. If they'd done as many vaccine rollouts, maybe we wouldn't have as many outbreaks as we do right now. This pandemic is not over. We need to continue to support businesses, we need to get the rollout of vaccines underway and we need to support Victorians in these difficult days.