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

[by video link] My question is to the Prime Minister. The government announced aged-care workers would be fully vaccinated by Easter. It's August. Less than half are fully vaccinated and aged-care facilities across Sydney are in lockdown. Will the Prime Minister take responsibility for failing to deliver on his announcement and vaccinate all aged-care workers by now?

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

The government's national vaccination program is the responsibility of the Prime Minister, the Minister of Health and the government. We do take responsibility for rolling out the national vaccine program. And where there are challenges and faults, we correct them and we get on with fixing them, and that is exactly what the government is doing. I'll ask the Minister for Health to add further to the answer.

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

I thank the member for Greenway for her question. At this point in time, the latest advice that I have is that there are approximately 275,357 staff across aged-care services and that 257,143 vaccinations have been administered across those 275,000 staff. That includes 156,340, or 56.8 per cent of first doses, amongst those staff and 100,803, or 36.6 per cent second doses.

On the advice of, and from discussions that I've had with, Lieutenant General Frewen and his team, every facility in Australia is required to have, and does have, a plan for vaccination. The range of options which have been developed with those facilities includes the following. Firstly, there is self-vaccination, where facilities are conducting that program as a form of inreach.

Ms Catherine King interjecting—

Ms Collins interjecting—

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

The members for Ballarat and Franklin.

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

That has been one of the most successful, the example being the TLC facility, which has an over 90 per cent success rate with both residents and with staff in Victoria across all of their different properties. The second thing as part of that is that we are expecting over the next two weeks there'll be over 30,000 staff—

Ms Catherine King interjecting—

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

The member for Ballarat is warned.

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

who are completed through the variety of programs. That will also include inreach through vaccination service providers—six principal vaccination service providers. Then, thirdly, there's inreach through general practices and what are called Commonwealth vaccination clinics. In addition to that, there are the outreach options of state vaccination clinics, of Commonwealth vaccination clinics, of general practices and of hubs.

All of these things are coming together. In addition to that, one of the things which the Prime Minister was able to achieve through his work with the national cabinet was a commitment by national cabinet for the states and territories to produce public health orders to mandate that anybody who wishes to work in an aged-care facility will have to be vaccinated. It's an important initiative, and I thank the states and territories for their cooperation in working with the Prime Minister for that outcome.