Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We're in the middle of a national emergency with half the country locked down because of the Prime Minister's failure to take responsibility and do the two jobs he set for himself at the start of the year. But, last week, throughout the parliament, we had the Prime Minister and members of the government telling us what a great job they're doing and how terrifically well everything's going.

The fact is we still have no safe national quarantine system 18 months into the pandemic and we're still coming near last in the developed world on the vaccine rollout. But, instead of fixing it, we have these demented, deranged, deluded, dishonest and downright dangerous comments from government members. The cost of their failure is growing every day: the deaths and disease we hear, day after day now in New South Wales; the record number of calls to Lifeline last week, our national suicide prevention hotline; and the businesses being destroyed. The Reserve Bank of Australia now says there's $2 billion of economic damage done every week and counting. That's tens of billions of dollars of unnecessary debt being loaded for the next generation to repay, and the risk of a second recession is growing. And there is vaccine hesitancy. The vaccines are our ticket out. We have to get it done quickly. When the vaccines finally arrive, it is a race, so I urge the government to take up Labor's positive proposal: $300 to every adult vaccinated by 1 December. It's cheaper than lockdowns and their waste and rorts, it'll overcome hesitancy and it's economic stimulus when we need it to avoid a second recession.