Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have received a letter from the honourable member for Rankin proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:

The costs and consequences of the government's vaccination rollout failures.

I call upon those members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places.

More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

One of the finest people to ever serve in this parliament, and indeed the parliament down the hill, was Kim Beazley. When I used to work for Kim Beazley some 15 years ago one of the sayings that I would hear him say often, which I found quite amusing, was: 'That mob over there couldn't organise a kick in a street fight.' I was thinking about that today when the Treasurer had two opportunities and two Dorothy Dixers. First he was asked a question about fiscal discipline. He had three minutes and didn't mention fiscal discipline once. Then he was asked a question about tax and he couldn't answer it, because the question was so poorly written. I was thinking, at that moment, if these characters over there can't even organise two Dorothy Dixers no wonder they can't organise vaccines or purpose-built quarantine.

What a farce it has been watching them try and explain and slither out of this mess that they have made of the two jobs that the Prime Minister had to do this year. I tell you what they can organise, they can put together a decent looking press conference. We saw this spectacle yesterday here in this building. We had the military uniforms. We had the fancy PowerPoint slide. We had the Prime Minister walk out with his puffed-up self-importance, with his little mate from Melbourne looking all solemn as well. All of this cooked up—all of this production, all of this spectacle—just to tell us what everybody else in the country, and certainly everybody on this side of the House already knew, just to fess up and admit what the rest of us have been saying for months: lockdowns are the only way to deal with this virus in the absence of a proper vaccine rollout and those lockdowns are smashing the national economy of Australia. They didn't quite admit that they had been wrong all of this time. It was more that they kind of hoped that we wouldn't notice that they have been wrong all of this time.

How much of this economic destruction could have been avoided if they already understood these basic truths? How much of the human cost, how much of the economic cost could have been averted if they understood all along that what really matters here is the vaccine rollout? In the absence of a good one we will have more lockdowns and with lockdowns there will be lots of damage done to workers, small businesses and the national economy.

When it comes to lockdowns it's hard to take the Treasurer seriously. The same guy who was there yesterday saying, 'It turns out that lockdowns are really important to protect the economy and protect people from the virus,' is the same joker who stood at that dispatch box, and up in the Canberra press gallery here in the Parliament House building, and ranted and raved about the biggest public policy failure of our lifetime being Daniel Andrews having to lockdown the Victorian economy. This was the same guy who ranted and raved from that dispatch box about lockdowns. This was the same Prime Minister who was congratulating, indeed encouraging, Premier Berejiklian not to lockdown, saying it was the gold standard not to lockdown. And we all know how costly that error has been when we look at the hundreds of cases each day that we see in New South Wales and more specifically in Sydney.

When it comes to vaccines, we asked over and over again today about aged-care workers. The Prime Minister finally admitted that they're at least four months late and 44 per cent short, and that's just on the first shot—the promise they made to have workers vaccinated by Easter. This is part of the broader failure when it comes to vaccines. We are well behind where we need to be as a country as a consequence of the failures of those opposite.

We asked about the economy as well. We asked them specifically, 'What are the costs and consequences of the Prime Minister's failure to do those two jobs—vaccines and purpose-built quarantine?' Billions of dollars a week are being shed from the national economy, on the government's own figures, because of the mess that they've made of vaccines and quarantine—every single week. This is the price tag on this government's incompetence. This is the price that ordinary Australian working families and local communities are being asked to pay for the Prime Minister's inability to do those two jobs this year. This Prime Minister is the dill that Australia can't afford. These costs and consequences of the Prime Minister's failure are being carried by the ordinary women and men of this country.

We have said all along, even at the beginning of the recovery earlier this year when Australia was emerging from the first recession in almost 30 years, the worst one in almost a century, that we welcomed that progress but that the recovery was always hostage to the ability of the government to roll out vaccines effectively and build that quarantine. We said all along that you couldn't have a first-rate recovery with a third-rate vaccine rollout, and that has proven to be the case. We're seeing that right now.

Those opposite must be from another planet in talking about how well the economy's going when, at the same time, the Treasurer has repeatedly admitted that the economy is currently shrinking in this quarter and he can't rule out—in his words—'a second recession in the second year'. The Treasurer himself can't rule that out. I don't know where they get the front, frankly, to come in here and tell the Australian people, through the Australian parliament, that their economy is going gangbusters. After everything that Australians have done for each other to limit the spread of the virus—Australians have done their bit—all they ask is that the government does their bit as well.

The Prime Minister has taken to using Olympic analogies all of a sudden. He said it wasn't a race, but now, because the focus group report is in, he wants to talk about the Olympics. He knows that Australians are proud of our Olympics team, so he is using Olympic analogies. They are at risk of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory when it comes to the vaccine rollout. We did make an amazing start as a country in 2020. That's a credit to our people and what they did for each other, and that advantage has been squandered. We were leading on the first lap and now we have stumbled on the second lap as a consequence of his failures.

The Australian people are working this Prime Minister out. They know that this farce when it comes to vaccines and quarantine says so much. It's a real window into the soul of this government. It says so much about the character of this government and the man who leads it, and Australians are working that out. They see all of the arrogance that we see here in question time, all of the complacency and all of this sense that any question asked about any of these important issues is some kind of personal affront to the Prime Minister—how dare we ask all of these questions! They see all of these efforts to avoid and evade responsibility when it comes to the job that the Australian people pay him to do.

I think the Australian people are working out that the man who sits over there, the Prime Minister of this country, is temperamentally unsuited for the role of leadership. He is psychologically incapable of taking responsibility for these failures which are bleeding the Australian economy at the moment because of all of these lockdowns caused by his failures on vaccines and quarantine. And now he's forced into these humiliating concessions that lockdowns are important. Lockdowns are because of the failure on vaccines. The failure on vaccines is his fault, and that's costing the Australian economy dearly.

Over and over again today he was asked about our constructive alternative, to say, 'We have got two issues in this country at the moment—the economy is bleeding and it needs help and the vaccine rollout is bleeding and needs help—and we could deal with both of those things at once. We could provide a shot in the arm for the vaccine rollout and a shot in the arm for workers and small businesses in the economy at the same time.' We could do that. Of course, true to form, despite the fact that General Frewen said only a couple of hours ago in this building that the government themselves are discussing and considering cash incentives for vaccines, the Prime Minister is in a rush to rule that out. And we dealt with that at some level today, and some of the important conclusions we can draw from it.

The Prime Minister pretends all of a sudden that $6 billion is a lot of money, in his book, despite the fact that he wasted $13 billion on JobKeeper for companies whose profits were rising and who didn't need help, wasted all that money on the car park rorts, which my colleagues have done so well to uncover, and wasted all that money on sport rorts, dodgy land deals and all the rest of it. The most wasteful government since Federation sits over there at the moment. After all of that, he wants to pretend that $6 billion invested in fixing his vaccine failures and the mess that those opposite have made of the economy is not money well spent. Well, we think it is money well spent. In fact, there could hardly be a more responsible use of taxpayer money than fixing the vaccine rollout, trying to prevent these lockdowns and trying to avert the economic carnage that is a consequence of his failures. So spare us the lectures about economic responsibility from the most wasteful government since Federation! What we're proposing is a fraction of the cost of the damage that his incompetence and ineptitude, and the Treasurer's as well, is doing to the Australian economy. The sooner we fix vaccines and the sooner we fix lockdowns, the sooner we fix the economy as well.

Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The assistant minister on a point of order?

Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Road Safety and Freight Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I wanted to afford the honourable member the opportunity to finish his speech. He can have his opinions about the Prime Minister, but during his speech, early in it, he used an unparliamentary term.

An opposition member interjecting—

I'm making the call. He used an unparliamentary term, and I ask that it be withdrawn please.

Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Did the—

Opposition members interjecting—

Order! I ask the honourable member: did he make an unparliamentary term or expression?

Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I don't believe so, Mr Deputy Speaker.

Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'll leave it at that, thank you. I call the Minister for Regional Health.

David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I totally reject a lot of the premises that the member for Rankin just brought out. The Australian record on managing the COVID pandemic, a one-in-a-hundred-year event, is second to none. I don't know any person in any country who wouldn't prefer to be living here and seeing how we've managed it compared to the devastation that it has wrought around the world. A pandemic is a one-in-a-hundred-year event, and we should be incredibly proud of our vaccine program.

Mr Deputy Speaker, two out of every three people over the age of 50 years have now received their first or second vaccine. Eighty per cent of those over 70 have received their first vaccine, and 42 per cent will receive it shortly. There is a lag in these figures because most of the vaccines are AstraZeneca. All of a sudden, when three months ticks over, a lot of these figures will double. That's as opposed to the Pfizer vaccine, which has only a three-week interval. Four out of 10 people over the age of 16 have been vaccinated.

As I said, when you look at the devastation overseas and you see what's happened, you realise that how we've managed it here in this country is exceptional. We are having our worst second wave and still we've managed to suppress it to 3,700 total cases. There are many cities around the world that have more than that in their second wave. Unfortunately, we have had 16 deaths this year, 925 in total in the whole pandemic. That is exceptional. Our hospitals and the care people are receiving in Australia are second to none. The mortality rate in ICUs is a fraction of what it has been overseas, because we've managed our health system well.

Around regional Australia, which is home to many of my constituents, we have had 2.2 million doses distributed far and wide. If you count the larger cities, that's 3.4 million out of a total 12.7 million. Whether it's Tibooburra in the far west of New South Wales, Eucla in WA or Kangaroo Island, we've had the Royal Flying Doctor Service delivering almost 10,000 vaccines to remote and regional Australia. The rollout is ramping up. We have got 5,000 GPs who've expressed an interest, and in regional and rural Australia we have over 108 Aboriginal community controlled health organisations that are vaccinating, both with AstraZeneca and with Pfizer.

The member for Rankin had a go at the economic consequences. We have weathered the economic consequences of this pandemic so much better than other nations. When we got the economy going again, we had more people back in employment than were there before the pandemic started. Other countries and nations have had double-digit reductions in their GDP. Even with this lockdown, we are still way ahead of all those other nations. When all the emotion has gone out of it, there are so many people who realise how well we have done. As Lieutenant General Frewen, who's been running the rollout, said, 'It's convenience that counts.' That's why part of our plan involves getting more GPs involved and more pharmacies involved. We've already got 226 pharmacies delivering vaccines. By the end of this month, there will be over 500. As more vaccine doses become available, they will be rolled out by potentially 3,600 pharmacy outlets. That's on top of the potential full rollout to more and more general practices, not to mention the Commonwealth vaccination centres. On top of that, we have the jurisdictions running their major hubs and outlets. We've brought on board a lot of pharmacies in the breakout areas in Sydney and in south-west Sydney in particular to make it much more convenient.

Dr Karen Price from the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners has just validated our decision, and the decision of ATAGI and the TGA, to approve the rollout of the Pfizer vaccine, which is one of the mRNA vaccines, to immunocompromised young people to enable them to get vaccinated. People with chronic diabetes, people who have had cancer, people on immunosuppressants, people with chronic lung disease, cystic fibrosis—all of those people who really need the vaccine will be able to get it. That will also involve getting those vaccines out and around regional Australia.

Professor Jodie McVernon from the Doherty institute has modelled our plan, and we are methodically rolling that plan out. We aim to get to 70 per cent vaccinated by the end of the year, which will allow a reduction in a lot of the restrictions. I expect we will get 80 per cent, because when you have more vaccines available in more outlets, the numbers will increase exponentially. Over the last 24 hours, we've hit 200,000 vaccinations. That's an exceptional rollout. That's 1.4 million vaccines per week. Since the first month, when we were starved of vaccines for a variety of reasons, including that the European Union blocked the delivery to this country of 3.6 million vaccine doses we had secured in a commercial arrangement, we have seen a million doses a week coming into the country, and there will probably be 1.4 million delivered during this current week. That will continue.

We have also been supporting the economy. In the states that have been affected by the lockdown, the Commonwealth has been involved in a directed economic rescue package to individuals, with $750 per week if you've lost more than 20 hours work or $450 if you've lost at least 8 or less than 20 hours of work. Then, for people who have lost their part-time job and who are on income support, there's a $200 payment that can go to them to supplement that. In the jurisdictions, we've done a deal, fifty-fifty with New South Wales, to get Service New South Wales to roll out support direct to businesses. In New South Wales, that support alone has reached $1 billion.

So we have supported the economy and we have kept the nation safe. We have done so much to make the vaccination rollout and the economic management second to none around the world. We shouldn't listen to this nitpicking, negative response by the members on the other side. You have just got to realise that we're all in this together. We are rolling out the vaccination. We were slow out of the blocks, but everyone can recognise, because they see the numbers themselves every day, that the rollout is ramping up at an amazing rate, and it will ramp up even further. We put money into research into vaccines. We have put extra funds into managing mental health. Isolation is very distressing to the elderly, to young people, to everyone. We've put money in all sorts of digital programs, because what we've learnt from COVID is that a lot of the work gets deliver by digital means. Whether it's telehealth, Lifeline or the headspace rollout, all these things are part of a strategy to support the nation during a one-in-100-year event.

There is nothing that we shouldn't be proud of. The whole health workforce has put their shoulder to the wheel, and they will continue to do so. I look forward to seeing many more people getting back to a normal life in the coming months and going forward. There is a way through this pandemic. First of all, there is vaccination at a mass level, which reduces the severity of the illness and protects you and your loved ones, making mortality much less likely, and then also there are all the emerging new treatments, like I said on the ABC the other day. We've had Relenza and Tamiflu. We will also have treatment for this disease. (Time expired)

Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Over 18 months into this pandemic, it feels like we are still living through 2020. Cities are in lockdown, state borders are shut, Australians are stranded overseas, airlines are grounded and a much-reduced parliament is passing emergency financial support bills. And, most tragically, intensive care units are filling up and Australians are again dying from COVID-19—today a 27-year-old.

For Australians who gave up so much over the last 18 months, this is one of the greatest frustrations we have with this government. Countless Australians lost their jobs. We homeschooled our kids, we stayed at home and we didn't visit our parents. We all did it to stop the spread of this virus, trusting that, if we did our bit, the government would do theirs. But this government did not do its job, and it has failed. All that good work we did—the head start we built on the rest of the world, the economy we kept running—was squandered because this Prime Minister didn't think the vaccine rollout was a race. How completely stupid can you get?

Only 15 per cent of the whole population of Australians are fully vaccinated. The vast majority of Australians are just as vulnerable to COVID today as they were 12 months ago, if not more so, because of the delta strain. Because of that, we are still facing lockdowns. It is because of this government's failure that Sydney and Brisbane are today in lockdown, while millions of other Australians live under restrictions, and we have Victoria and South Australia only just coming out of lockdown, and who knows what's about to happen in the west?

The BCA has estimated that the Sydney lockdown alone costs $257 million per day or $1.8 billion a week. Treasury modelling yesterday revealed that harsh lockdowns could cost the national economy up to $3.2 billion per week. That is the price that Australian workers and small businesses are paying for this Prime Minister's incompetence, arrogance and hubris. This week we saw 2½ thousand aviation workers stood down for at least two months, if not more, and left confused by the support offered by this government. Just this morning, we had the Deputy Prime Minister having to clarify to newspapers that Qantas ground handlers could receive support. This is despite him saying, when he announced the scheme on Monday, 'We're talking about pilots and hostesses—not people on the ground.' Memo to the DPM: they're not called 'hostesses' anymore; they're actually called 'cabin crew'. Now it turns out that he's talking about some people on the ground but not others. What on earth is going on with this government? This is chaos when it comes to people understanding what their entitlements might be and whether or not they're going to get support.

At the centre of the government's failures is, of course, the vaccine rollout. The government promised four million vaccinations by the end of March, six million vaccinations by 10 May, all aged-care and disability-care workers to be vaccinated by Easter, and every Australian to be fully vaccinated by October. That is what the government promised. Far from being the envy of the world, the Morrison government is now being held up internationally as an example of what not to do and as an example of how countries like ours that got complacent about our early success in keeping the virus out are now struggling because of failed vaccine rollouts and leaders whose hubris led them to believe that it was not a race. We are now an example internationally of what not to do. The health challenges and the economic challenges can only be overcome by vaccination and a decent, fit-for-purpose quarantine system. The economic and social consequences of failing to do so are writ large for all to see.

For eight long years, this government has overseen record low wages growth and chronically high underemployment. We've seen them preside over aged-care crises, an energy crisis, a housing crisis and a skills crisis. We've seen them fail to actually deal with this pandemic and fail to actually roll out a decent vaccine program. This is a race; it was always a race. It's a race for our health. It's a race for businesses not to be stranded by the Prime Minister. It's a race for the country's economic and social future.

Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Road Safety and Freight Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is a great opportunity to come to the dispatch box and remind Australians that, whilst we stand here and trade metaphorical blows and political jibes, both sides of this House are united in trying to get out the other side of COVID for the betterment of the Australian public. It's only the contrast in what we believe is the best way to get there that brings us to this box.

The first speaker spoke about the government's failure and the second contribution spoke about chaos. I remind the House of the last time those who sit on the other side of this chamber were in government, and we saw what failure and chaos looked like. Let me remind you of nothing other than the pink batts scheme and the school halls program. That was lauded as an education revolution, but, within months of these halls going up all around the country, our academic standards, assessed via PISA internationally, went backwards. The largest contributor to GDP in my electorate is agriculture, and I will never let my cattle producers forget the chaos and failure caused by those who sit on the other side to live cattle export or the impact on our growers, our aviation, our transport operators, our maritime operators and our feed producers—those who lost their livelihoods as a result of policy settings. That is what failure and chaos look like.

It's ironic that today the MPI speaks of the cost and consequence of the rollout, yet the cornerstone of the debate that they bring to the table is an additional $2 billion cost—offering $300 incentives to Australians who have already been vaccinated. Is there a greater irony that this House would have to consider—to bring to the table an MPI that speaks about cost reduction, when the very cornerstone of the debate is increasing the cost?

It beggars belief.

We had two jobs—we're constantly reminded of that by the other side—and we do have two jobs, and we're getting on with doing them. Job 1: save lives. Our job as an Australian government is to save lives, and I think both sides of the House are united on that. The other job was to save our economy. Aged-care facilities fall within the Commonwealth purview, and all 2,566 Commonwealth aged-care facilities have received first and second doses of the vaccine. Almost 80 per cent of over-70s are protected with their first dose. Over 40 per cent of over-70s have received their second dose.

The government is united. We want to make sure that we have 70 per cent vaccinated—and that's agreed by national cabinet. All the states and territories agree. Seventy per cent of people per state vaccinated is the target they have accepted. Then, from a national perspective, it should be 80 per cent. The Doherty report has indicated that getting to 70 per cent population vaccine coverage will support optimal performance of test, trace, isolate and quarantine—TTIQ—capacity. Applying continuous low levels of social restriction will make the requirement for stringent lockdowns unlikely.

No-one in this House wants further lockdowns. They cripple our economy and affect the social welfare of the people who we come here to represent. At the moment, in my state of Queensland—the great state of Queensland—no fewer than 11 shires in the south-east corner are locked down, a situation we have not found ourselves in before. It lends greater sympathy for the states of Victoria and New South Wales, which have gone through lockdowns. We have a multiphase approach to get out the other side of this. We have saved lives. Internationally, no fewer than four million lives have been lost. Here in Australia, we are the envy of the world.

Our Prime Minister takes responsibility and says he's responsible for the vaccine program and he's responsible for getting it fixed. He's also said that we on this side of the House are fighting COVID and we will let those on the other side of the House come in and fight us.

Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I know that we as a nation will get through this pandemic, but there've been inflection points throughout this long time—now almost 20 months—that have required definitive, strong action. We're now at such a time. Unfortunately we're not having the action that we should. Initially, at the beginning of this pandemic, the Prime Minister was off to the footy, if you all remember. He was off to the footy because he didn't recognise or understand how serious this pandemic was. Thankfully, the health minister was able to get the government to listen to the health advice and do the right thing, including closing the borders.

Vaccine procurement has been a major issue, and the Prime Minister has taken a prominent role in this. Unfortunately, he became fixated with the local manufacture of vaccines, initially of the Queensland University vaccine and then the AstraZeneca vaccine, made by CSL in Melbourne. The messaging regarding vaccines and vaccinations has been absolutely diabolical. There's a lack of supply of the Pfizer mRNA vaccine, which is the only one that is recommended for younger people. The messaging about this and its availability has been opaque and very poorly organised.

Many of my medical colleagues are increasingly frustrated by the problems that have been happening with vaccine procurement and the messaging from both state and federal governments. Unfortunately, my electorate is one of the electorates that are paying the price. I will read something I received from one of my medical colleagues who I know very well, who works in an accident and emergency department—not in a hospital in my electorate, but one nearby. This just came to me out of the blue. He said, 'Mike, I hope you're well back in parliament. I've been seeing COVID-sick patients who invariably are all unvaccinated. When I talk to them and their families and other unvaccinated patients coming into emergency, many tell me that they don't see credibility in the government and the health advice. Some feel that they've had their livelihoods taken from them from a government that doesn't care or understand, and they're very angry about the divisive line drawn in Sydney that's splitting the east and the west. Aren't we supposed to be all in this together? Can you help? Can you make our plight known?' That's from someone who works on the front line, and is now seeing many patients in Sydney who have COVID-19, some of whom are going to die, I believe, unnecessarily.

The messaging has been diabolical. The messaging we've heard here today from the assistant health minister, the member for Lyne, is that we're all in this together. We're not all in this together. Let me make that quite clear. The people who are suffering in this pandemic are the most disadvantaged and the poorest, and that is quite clear. We see stock markets at record levels, we see housing prices at record levels, and we see people who can work from home doing quite well. But those people who work with their hands, who provide services to us all, who get the economy moving, are the ones who are suffering the most, and will suffer the most, because of the poor management by this government and this Prime Minister.

We need a national response. We should have teams going into homes providing home immunisation. We should have at-risk people being vaccinated wherever they want to be vaccinated. We should have vaccine hubs in the most disadvantaged areas. We have no national leadership. The Doherty modelling is just that. It is not peer reviewed; it is just modelling. It's not the Ten Commandments. We should be having open discussion about how we approach this. We should have other opinions about modelling. We should be discussing the health advice without this opaque lack of leadership, these scripted responses from people in the Army with medals and ribbons across their chest. They are not the ones on the front line. We need a national response, and it's not coming. It's a disgrace! (Time expired)

Nola Marino (Forrest, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Regional Development and Territories) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Firstly, I'd like to acknowledge everyone in lockdown today and offer our real concern and thoughts to you. I want to recognise all Australians and thank them for everything they've done throughout this pandemic and everything they are still yet to do. I want to acknowledge frontline workers, health and aged-care workers, GPs, pharmacies, mental health workers, those working in the research and development of vaccines, and our defence forces. I want to thank all Australians for what you're doing individually in this space. I know that you understand just what you need to do at home and that you're doing your very best, which is what the government is doing. It is one thing to have a crisis; it's another thing to be able to make good and sound decisions with the best information you have available for you at that time. That is exactly what this government has done.

As the Assistant Minister for Regional Development and Territories, I want to acknowledge the work that's been done in our most remote territories during COVID crisis. I want to thank those emergency management teams in the Indian Ocean Territories, Norfolk Island, and even those working in Jervis Bay territories. Some of these communities are the most isolated communities we have anywhere in Australia. I want to thank and acknowledge the administrators, Mr Eric Hutchinson and Natasha Griggs, for their work and leadership. They're working in very remote circumstances.

As the assistant minister for territories, I'd also like to acknowledge and put on record my great appreciation for Regional Development Australia. When COVID first hit, 53 different RDAs linked in with me three times a week to feed direct information about what was happening right around this great nation and what was happening on the ground. Those 53 volunteer organisations contributed three times a week in the early stages of COVID—and still are now, and that information goes through to each relative portfolio area—and also provided relevant advice to the national cabinet when it was relevant in that space.

We see so many of our organisations and those representing us working so hard to do their very best at this time, just like the government is doing. Right out in the communities, there is a lot happening for those that are keeping each other safe. I want to recognise all those who have been extraordinarily kind and caring in their communities—those who have made sure that people, in the earlier stages and during lockdowns, were limited to what they could acquire or what they needed, and those who went out of their way to help particularly in small communities.

I also want to acknowledge, with the assistant minister here, the transport and logistics sector, who have really kept the wheels turning. Everything that we see and have access to in our supermarkets, no matter where we are in Australia, in spite of some of the earlier shortages has been delivered by our logistics chain. I want to thank all those in the transport and logistics space for keeping on doing what they're doing, and doing their very best to stay safe at the same time.

Yes, we are rolling out the vaccine program. There are, I think we heard today, 12.8 million Australians who are currently vaccinated—and that will continue. I encourage people: make sure you have your vaccine. Get along to wherever the closest venue is for you and make sure that you have your vaccine. To those who have been vaccinated: thank you for doing everything you can to keep yourself, your family, your community and, as the Prime Minister has said, the rest of Australia safe. That's what we're all doing here. Each one of us is doing our best, from the Prime Minister right the way through to the cabinet, to the members of government, to the other side of politics, to all of us out there working in our communities, to try to keep you safe.

I will finish this where I started, by acknowledging those who are in lockdown. Yes, it is extraordinarily tough, and I encourage you to look after yourselves and the people around you when you're locked down at this time. But we are here doing everything we can to assist, and the COVID vaccine rollout is a key part of that work.

Michelle Rowland (Greenway, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Communications) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

[by video link] Some of the costs of this government's vaccination rollout failures can be quantified but some are unquantifiable. Some of the consequences are already known but others are yet to be known. We know that the current lockdown in Sydney is costing hundreds of millions of dollars a day and billions of dollars a week. We know that this cost is hitting the pockets of Australian businesses and workers. Meanwhile, Australians in lockdown, in isolation, are suffering deeply from the intangible costs, whether it's the owner of a small business watching their life's work and dreams evaporate or the grandparents who can't hold a newborn grandchild in their arms.

Australia shouldn't be in this situation. Australia should and could be in a better position than it is now, had the Prime Minister done his jobs. The Prime Minister had two jobs this year—the speedy effective rollout of the vaccine, and quarantine—and he's failed at both. It wasn't the Prime Minister's job to get Mathias Cormann elected to the OECD, though you could be forgiven for thinking that it was. While the Prime Minister made over 50 phone calls on behalf of Mr Cormann, he didn't once pick up the phone to the head of Pfizer. While Mr Cormann found himself at the top of the OECD, Australia found itself at the bottom of the OECD ladder for the vaccination rollout.

Mistake after mistake has been made by this government. We should have had greater supply of more vaccines, including Pfizer. We should be further down the vaccination path than we are. But we are where we are. We can't undo the mistakes of this government, but we can get out of this pandemic if we work together constructively—but only if our leaders show maturity and humility in considering constructive suggestions where they are offered. Australia must get out of the situation it is now in. There is no greater priority. Labor has made and will continue to make constructive suggestions to get our communities, like mine, through this pandemic and out the other side.

Labor's four-point COVID plan is clear: we need to fix the vaccine rollout now by getting more supply and we need more walk-in vaccination clinics. At present, there are several of these clinics established in Western Sydney, but none in my electorate of Greenway. I have made representations to the New South Wales health minister, urging him to expand the number of walk-in vaccination clinics in Greenway to help make it easier for local residents to get vaccinated without needing to make an appointment. We also need a proper conversation about how to incentivise vaccinations. Labor has put forward a constructive suggestion of cash payments to help get to the 80 per cent vaccination target as quickly as possible while providing a much-needed cash injection for our economy, and families and young people doing it tough right now. I urge the Prime Minister to put hot-headed politicking aside and to take a calm look at this suggestion in the national interest.

There's also an urgent need to address vaccination hesitancy in the community. We need to stop the confusing advice around the AstraZeneca vaccine. Inconsistency on this message isn't helpful for members of my community. We need clear and timely information provision. This means clamping down on misinformation, as well as making credible information available. Here, we need a real plan to get information into our diverse multicultural communities. In-language translations across the federal and New South Wales government websites are patchy and inconsistent. A quarter of Australia's 73,000 Tamil speakers reside in the eight local government areas of concern in Western Sydney now subject to COVID-19 rules and restrictions, including in my electorate of Greenway. And yet it's easier to find COVID-19 information in Icelandic than in Tamil on the New South Wales health website and the federal government's COVID vaccination eligibility checker on the health department's website doesn't include Tamil as a language option. As I speak today, the eligibility checker is available in only 15 languages and it is most unfortunate that Tamil is not one of them.

We also need to build our mRNA manufacturing capacity. This is something Australia can do. Western Sydney is a manufacturing hub; aside from the health benefits, my electorate would surely benefit from the jobs this would bring.

Most Australians in lockdown are doing the right thing at great personal and professional sacrifice, but they need to know how and when this will end. They need to know where the finish line is, that by staying home and getting vaccinated there's a road map out of this. That's why Labor is offering constructive suggestions, because people need and expect a clear plan and a light at the end of this tunnel.

Julian Simmonds (Ryan, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will pick up where the last Labor speaker left off, because the Labor Party's idea of a constructive suggestion when it comes to the vaccine rollout is to offer cash payments to people who have already had the vaccine. It's ironic that we stand here today, at the Labor Party's urging, to talk about the costs and consequences of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout on the day after they announced a $6 billion policy to give cash payments to people, a good portion of whom are already vaccinated!

This is not the Australian way. It just goes to show that the Leader of the Opposition doesn't understand Australians. Australians don't need a bribe to do the right thing by their families, to do the right thing by their mates or to do the right thing by their communities. They're willing to do it because they know it's the right thing to do and they want to play their part in protecting their communities. That's why more than 1.2 million doses are going into arms every seven days at the moment.

The member for Macarthur stood up and talked about the lack of attention to people on the front line—which isn't true from this government, by the way—but he might want to turn to his own Leader of the Opposition and ask why the payments that he's proposing are not going to people on the front line. Or not just: they're also going to Twiggy Forrest, to Gina Rinehart and also to everybody in this chamber. This cash splash is not just a brain explosion by the Leader of the Opposition it is in fact his true colours. When he talks about putting public money towards incentivising people—$6 billion of it towards incentivising people to have their vaccinations—he's talking about your money and using that as a way to pay people who have already done the right thing, as I know that most Australians, over 70 per cent of Australians, are going to do.

The member for Macarthur also seemed, in his extraordinary speech, to talk down those military people who were involved on the front line of the COVID response. He seemed to dismiss them simply as—I think his words were along these lines—'people with medals on their chest'. It is something, in our community, to have earned those medals. It is something that we applaud amongst those service men and women, particularly in my electorate. Many of those service men and women have been on the front line of the COVID response for a long time. They've stood at hotel doors as part of hotel quarantine Some of them out of the Enoggera Barracks have now gone down to help New South Wales as well. So, when Labor tries to play cheap class warfare and talk down the military's involvement on the front line of the COVID response, it is an absolute embarrassment to them, an embarrassment to the member for Macarthur.

I feel sorry for the shadow Treasurer. I didn't think I'd ever have to say that. Not only has he been demoted—stripped of a vast chunk of his portfolio, which has been given to the Deputy Leader of the Opposition—but now the Leader of the Opposition is spending $6 billion without even picking up the phone to him. In fact, the Leader of the Opposition, in announcing the $6 billion policy, didn't pick up the phone to any of the shadow cabinet and talk to them about whether they thought it was a good idea. The reason he didn't do that is that these are his true colours, like the Labor governments and the Labor leaders before him, when it came to giving out cheques to dead people or paying for pink batts that literally caused deaths, or paying for school halls that weren't needed, or cash for clunkers—and on and on we could go. The Labor Party have never met a problem that they couldn't solve with financial irresponsibility. That is, at the end of it, what it comes down to.

This government, on the other hand, trusts Australians to do the right thing. My community is in lockdown right now. It is a nervous time for them. But guess what? They are turning up in record numbers to be tested and to be vaccinated, because they understand that that's what they need to do for their community, to help their community out of lockdown. They don't need cheques or bribes from the Leader of the Opposition. They are getting vaccinated because it's the right thing to do for their family.

We have heard the Labor party continue to talk down the vaccination rollout. They should know that they are the ones sending mixed messages to Australians. This government will keep saying to all Australians: 'Go and get the jab, AstraZeneca or Pfizer; they're both good jabs. Get it for the good of your community and your family.' (Time expired)

Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Services, Territories and Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

[by video link] I want to start by reading out a bit of an email I got from a constituent the other week. This is what it says: 'I haven't worked since the lockdown, and the majority of people I know are also not working. The strain this is causing is indescribable. Many of us have families with kids staying at home who are also struggling. I've witnessed a severe effect in their mental state. Some of the children are emotionally drained, anxious and traumatised, and it's very difficult for many of the parents, who themselves are emotionally drained, to take care of their children all day. Many of the parents are struggling with shame, guilt and low self-worth. The financial impact is also immense. The government benefits are low in comparison with our general weekly salary, and many family members are taking out loans, which is adding to the distress. I think the impact of this will last for months if not years.'

That's just one story, and there are millions like that here in south-west Sydney. There are lots of people who are really struggling. This is hard. Lockdown is hard. People are tired, people are anxious, people are frustrated. They're confused. They're hurting, and they're angry. They're angry with the state government. They're angry that the state government locked Sydney down too late and that this is not Western Sydney's fault. A lot of people say to me, 'If the state government had locked down earlier, when the virus was in Bondi, people here in Bankstown, Auburn, Fairfield and Blacktown wouldn't be suffering now.'

But I've got to tell you, they're even angrier with this federal government. This time last year, we were doing better than almost any other country in the world—because Australians did what we asked them to do, because they stayed at home, because they did their job. But now we're doing worse than most other developed countries—and why? Because this government didn't do their job. The rest of the world is now opening up and we're locking down. Why? Because there aren't enough Australians who are vaccinated to stop this virus from running amok here in Western Sydney and right across Greater Sydney. It didn't have to be this way.

This time last year, countries were buying vaccine from pharmaceutical companies like it was going out of style. In July last year the Americans bought 100 million doses of Pfizer. The Poms bought 90 million doses, and we were offered 40 million doses—enough to vaccinate every Australian adult. But we didn't buy anything from Pfizer until the end of November last year, and then we only bought 10 million doses—enough to vaccinate about a quarter of the country. We're paying for that mistake now. If you want proof of that, I would just need to move this camera to show you the empty streets here in Bankstown or take you to the choking hospital wards here in Western Sydney. There are hundreds of people in hospital here now, dozens are in ICU and 23 are on ventilators, and a lot of them call Western Sydney home. This is a place where people are sick and are dying at the moment. Yesterday, not far from here, in Liverpool, a man in his 20s died, not in a hospital but in his home. He was 27. He got married six weeks ago. He had his whole life in front of him, and now he's gone. My whole community is dangerously exposed. We got statistics yesterday that tell us that only 14 ½ per cent of south-west Sydney is fully vaccinated—way below the national average. South-west Sydney is the epicentre of this crisis, and we're less protected than the rest of the country. We've got plenty of police here. We've got plenty of soldiers here. But we don't have enough vaccines.

The front page of the Australian newspaper tells us there's some 'lightning response' option the government's developing to take vaccines to hotspots—well, we need them here, and we need them here now. The mayor of Canterbury Bankstown has called for a vaccine hub to be built at the velodrome in Bankstown. That was rejected. The Vietnamese community have offered their community centre as a vaccination hub. That was rejected. Local GPs have asked for more Pfizer. That's been rejected. I've written to the health minister about this—no response. The Prime Minister talked about a GP clinic at Chester Hill the other day in question time. It's not open yet. It doesn't open for another two weeks, and they say they need Pfizer to be able to operate it. If you've got a lightning squad, get it here fast. This is a race. It really is a race: the faster we get the vaccine, the fewer people here in my community are going to get sick and die.

James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this matter of public importance about the situation Australia is in today in dealing with the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. I think it's important to begin by reflecting on some of the very important, early, strong decisions that this government made that mean the things we're talking about today are very different from what they could have been if we as a government, under the Prime Minister's leadership, hadn't made those very significant early decisions that have kept us safe and, comparatively, in such a strong position compared to so many other nations around the world.

One of the first significant decisions that the government made was to close our international border, first directly with China and then extending that to closing the border to everyone except for Australian citizens and permanent residents seeking to return home, and other limited types of exemptions. This was an enormous decision. Looking back on it now, of course, we've confronted so many other significant challenges that are once-in-a-lifetime type challenges, but at that time I'd never thought that in my lifetime we would have a situation where we would need to close the border of this nation to the rest of the world. It was an enormous decision to have taken, and, as we reflect in hindsight on what might have occurred if we hadn't decided to put such a strong border in place, we would be in a very, very different position today in dealing with the challenge of defeating this COVID-19 pandemic.

One of the second really significant things early on was the decision of the Prime Minister to create and form the national cabinet structure, which meant that he could bring together the leaders of all the other governments around this country, state and territory. This is vitally important because, of course, it would be impossible for the Commonwealth government alone to deal with all the various complexities of the challenges of COVID, both economic and health. One of the obvious ones is that it is the state and territory jurisdictions that manage the health system. If you were not coordinating, collaborating and working with those jurisdictions, it would have been impossible for us to have had the success that we have had on the health front, but also on the economic front and some of the other important things that have required cooperation over the last 18 months between the Commonwealth government and the state and territory jurisdictions. I think that reform is one that is going to be quite enduring beyond the immediacy of the COVID response. It's a great credit to the Prime Minister for the judgement he showed and the decisions that he made to create that.

The third was our economic response, which had an enormous number of elements—most significantly, as we know, the JobKeeper program, which undoubtedly held our economy together through the early months of the entire country being locked down and the challenges that different jurisdictions met at different times when they had to take localised decisions around lockdowns and constricting their economies. There was the JobKeeper program, as well as the supplementary payments of JobSeeker and other Commonwealth entitlements, early access to super, the small business support packages, instant asset writedowns—all those things. All those decisions were made to ensure that we were providing as much economic support and stimulus whilst we dealt with the very early and severe restrictions that had to be put in place in our economy to protect people from the health point of view.

Now, 18 months later, we find ourselves in an enviable position, thanks to the early decisions that were made by this government under the leadership of our Prime Minister. We are now rolling out a vaccination program. More than a million doses were delivered in the last six days—an amazing logistical effort that is being done in a methodical way, following all the usual sensible precautions that should be followed when it comes to any major public health decisions, like rolling out a vaccination program. Now we are on track, given the announcement made yesterday by the Prime Minister, supported by information from the Doherty Institute, to see ourselves reach vaccination milestones and be able to gradually, but importantly, reopen the economy and the society of this country and have something to look forward to in the post-pandemic world of Australia, our future, having dealt with and hopefully learnt to live with the challenges of COVID-19. I commend our government, the Prime Minister in particular, for that leadership and I look forward to the coming months as we continue to implement the important plans we have to see us through this great challenge, the COVID-19 pandemic.

Debate adjourned.