Terri Butler (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the Environment and Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Does the Prime Minister take responsibility for bungling the aged-care vaccine rollout so badly that at one facility in my electorate half the residents have been fully vaccinated and half have not even received their first dose?

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

I will ask the Minister for Health and Aged Care to add further to my answer, but I don't accept the characterisation put forward by the member. Once again, I'm not surprised: the Labor Party comes into this place each and every day seeking to undermine the government's efforts to fight this virus. We will keep fighting the virus and the Labor Party will keep fighting us. I know where Australians want us to focus our attention. They want us to focus our attention on them, not on fighting the Labor Party.

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

Without knowing the facility—we will have to seek the details from the member, though they could have been provided but, obviously, there was a decision not to provide those details—99.9 per cent of facilities around Australia have now received first doses. In addition to that, 80 per cent of facilities around Australia have received second doses. Around the country, of 185,000 residential aged-care facility residents, there are 156,000, or over 84.1 per cent, that have received a first dose—all up, an average rate of 85 per cent of those facilities which have been visited—and 126,000 have received a second dose.

In relation to an individual facility, it does strike me that, if a facility has been fully vaccinated, they have received two visits. If they have received two visits, then all residents have been offered the opportunity to be vaccinated. It would be a very unusual situation if, having had two visits, those residents had not been offered the opportunity to be vaccinated. Around the country we do know that there are some who, because of their circumstances or because of their families, have not consented. Without knowing the details of this facility, we would have to find out.

But we have made sure that there is the opportunity for every resident in every facility to be vaccinated, and we will continue to do that. If there are individual residents who, after having had either a first visit or a second visit, have chosen not to or not been able for some reason to be vaccinated, we would want to know those reasons. We have an in-reach program. For example, in Victoria, we have 50 mobile residential clinics which are being delivered during the course of this week. That's assisting both workers and residents around the country. We are going through a program of visits over and above the first and second dose visits. So I'd invite the member to provide the details. (Time expired)