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

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

The impact of the Government's failures during this pandemic.

I call upon those honourable 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—

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

One of my favourite movies is The Blues Brothers. During the home quarantine that I had to do in Canberra I had the opportunity to look at it again. One of the best scenes, I think, is when Carrie Fisher's character confronts Jake about not turning up for their wedding. Jake comes up with excuses: 'Honest, I ran out of gas. I had a flat tyre. I didn't have enough money for cab fare. My tux didn't come back from the cleaners. An old friend came in from out of town. Someone stole my car. There was an earthquake. A terrible flood. Locusts. It wasn't my fault, I swear to God.' Remind you of anyone? It reminded me of the bloke who sits over there—the Prime Minister. It reminded me of him and his favourite phrases that he uses time and time again: 'It's not my job;' 'It's not my fault;' 'I don't hold a hose;' 'It's not a race;' 'The dog ate my colour-coded spreadsheet.'

There's never any leadership or any honesty from this Prime Minister. We've seen it from bushfires through to robodebt through to the failure on vaccines and quarantine. This is a Prime Minister who won't take responsibility for his own words, a Prime Minister who is truth hesitant. He said we are at the front of the queue for vaccines, but we know we've been running last in the developed world and we are not in the top 80 countries. He said four million Australians would be vaccinated by March, and he missed that target by more than 3½ million. He said that aged-care workers and residents and people in disability care would be vaccinated by Easter—he didn't say which year, to be fair!—but we know that, as of today, if you look at aged-care workers and people in disability care, less than half of that cohort have been vaccinated. He said repeatedly, 'It's not a race', but when called to account for that he had the hide to say, 'That was about TGA approvals', even though the Therapeutic Goods Administration had already approved the only two vaccines that are available in Australia—AstraZeneca and Pfizer—some period before he repeatedly said that.

This is a Prime Minister who never takes responsibility. He treats his own words like reptiles treat their young; he pushes them out into the world and then never has anything to do with them ever again. And, if somehow he does run into them down the track, there isn't so much as a flicker of recognition; it's, 'I don't know where that came from.' We saw it again today, repeatedly. This is a Prime Minister who never leads.

The most important area has of course been the failure on rolling out the vaccine and the ongoing failure on national quarantine. As we speak today, more than 18 months into this pandemic, there is not so much as a hole being dug for a new purpose-built quarantine centre anywhere in the country—not one. We know that hotel quarantine doesn't work. We know that hotels were built for tourists. And we know the absolute failure when it comes to vaccines. Today in parliament I spoke about my friend Khalil Ibrahim, whose parents died last week, on Tuesday and then on Friday. He has buried both his mum and his dad, who were due to get their vaccines this week. These are elderly Australians who weren't looked after by a government that was complacent and incompetent when it came to the rollout of the vaccine.

But we see it in other areas as well. Today we hear of a mass vaccination hub that is being established in Penrith—a good thing—but where is the one in Blacktown, in Mt Druitt and in those communities where the member for Greenway and the member for Chifley have been crying out for a mass vaccination hub? It appears political decisions even go down to that level. This is a government obsessed by colour-coded spreadsheets, a government for whom every action is about the politics. But it is not just when it comes to these issues because there's much more.

What we've had after the actions of the member for Dawson, Senator Canavan, the member for Hughes, is the Prime Minister say, 'We voted for the motion.' They did not say once the name 'George Christensen' or 'member for Dawson'. Not once. It was like Voldemort—you couldn't say his name. And the Deputy Prime Minister gave it up this morning when he said 'we don't want to poke the bear' when it comes to the member for Dawson. Just like the member for Dawson attending the rally in Mackay against lockdowns, against vaccinations, he said that was about freedom of speech. That's not leadership.

But we saw it as well, of course, earlier this year, with the only world leader who failed to condemn the attack on the Capitol building. The Prime Minister said, 'I think what is important now is not for me to be providing lectures to anybody; that is not my job.' We saw it in response to questions about his friend Brian Houston being invited to the White House. He said that is just 'gossip' and wouldn't answer the questions.

We saw it in the circumstances around Brittany Higgins. Here we have circumstances whereby the AFP has concluded its criminal investigations into the events just metres from the Prime Minister's office. Charges have been laid and will undergo due process. The Gaetjens inquiry, established by this Prime Minister to find out what his own office knew about these incidents, has now had five months and 27 days and we still have not had a response. At the March 4 Justice we saw a Prime Minister say protesters should be 'grateful' that they weren't 'shot', like in other parts of the world.

We have seen no accountability from this Prime Minister about sports rorts or about 'pork and ride'. In a fit of anger he sacked Christine Holgate right here but pretends that didn't happen. He pretends that he didn't say electric vehicles would 'end the weekend', but we know that that occurred. But significantly as well, he said, 'I commend New South Wales for not having a lockdown.' The consequences are half the country is in lockdown. Expecting him to take responsibility is like expecting a hologram to catch a ball; it is just not going to happen. There is a pattern of behaviour. When there's a problem: (1) deny its existence until it is a crisis; (2) when it does become a crisis, blame someone else; (3) when all else fails, rewrite history and pretend you haven't said what is on the record. There is no shame—all smirk—from this Prime Minister, and no accountability. Even the national cabinet, designed to hide information, has been ruled as not appropriate. We see the ongoing member for Bowman—continuing to chair the committee that the Prime Minister said he'd be removed from—being replaced by a bloke in the fine tradition of the current member for Bowman as the LNP candidate, rather than a woman.

In bad times, leaders rise. This one has shrunk into nothingness. The Prime Minister is always there for the photo op, never there for the follow-up. Labor have been constructive. When we announced our $300 incentive last week, what was the Prime Minister's gut instinct? It was not, 'That's an idea; we will consider it'; it was just no—just rejecting it, even though Lieutenant General Frewen has said it is a positive idea that should be considered as well as other measures. This Prime Minister is shameless, he is deceptive, and the more Australians look at him, the more they recognise the fact that this Prime Minister simply isn't up to the high office that he holds. (Time expired)

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

Everyone needs to realise that this is a one-in-100-years event. There is no playbook for pandemics unless you happened to be around in 2019, 2020 and 2021. What we've been through has been responded to probably more effectively in this nation than in any other nation on the planet. One only has to look at the projections of what would have happened if we hadn't had a successful pandemic plan that was rolled out around the country. The projections for our population and our age mix were that there would have been at least 30,000 deaths. Fortunately, we have reduced this 30-fold, to less than a thousand. It's tragic when anyone dies, but, compared to how severe it could have been, it's quite a testament to what everyone in this nation has achieved.

We've had the state health systems under pressure. We've had general practice under pressure. We've had pharmacies rolling sleeves up. We've had the Army involved. We've had commercial contractors. We've rolled it out around the network of residential aged-care facilities. We're getting it through the disability sector now. We have had 280 million vaccine doses on order. Everyone knows we had a bit of a hold-up at the front because the European Union blocked delivery of 3½ million contracted doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine. We've had a home-grown vaccine facility built in Melbourne. We have got Moderna coming through, with another 10 million doses by the end of the year, starting in September.

It isn't just the health response that has kept this nation going through this pandemic. We have had huge Commonwealth government support for individuals and for businesses. Everyone knows how successful JobKeeper was and how much JobSeeker also helped. In this second wave of delta, which is a much more easily transmissible variant of the COVID-19 virus, we've supported with the COVID disaster payment in the hotspots as they are declared, lasting for more than a week. We have helped support the state governments for business support which the states are rolling through their support networks—Service NSW in New South Wales, for instance. The economic response has also been supporting other industries. We have the housing industry seeing the greatest expansion of new homeowners in a generation.

In the cold, hard light of day, without all the emotion that the other side throws at us all the time, we have delivered a vaccine rollout that will meet its targets by December. The figures just speak for themselves; 268,000 doses in 24 hours is an amazing achievement. In the first month of the rollout there were 34,000 doses. At this rate, we will be at about 1½ million doses each week. That is exceptional. With this second wave, the benefit of the vaccines is starting to show, because even though there is a suppressed second wave the death rate is not as high as in the first wave.

Whether you look at the economic response or the health response, the outcomes in Australia are quite exceptional compared to other nations. We've seen GDPs collapse by 11 or 12 per cent in other nations. This second wave is having an outcome that will destroy that bounce back, but the fundamentals of our economy are still here. It could have been destroyed in that first wave but the Commonwealth government stumped up. It wasn't just that; it was the tax reform measures and the initiative to improve cash flow. Whether it was supporting people on income support or age pensioners, or any of the myriad other income support measures, we have supported everyone, and we know that once we get through this second wave we will bounce back.

In regional Australia, my particular area, it is quite an amazing rollout. We have the flying doctor going around the country to 95 sites. They're up to almost 11,000 doses so far and they'll keep delivering it around this wide brown land. There will be no place in regional and rural Australia that is not covered. As much as it is covered in the cities, it will be covered in regional Australia.

Now, one would think that, having seen all the chaos and mayhem that has happened overseas, one would be saying, 'Australia, you should be proud.' But, no, those on the other side have to make it a political issue. They drag down the response and make out that it's a failure, whereas I just look at the facts. It's all this spin, which I see as a way of attacking our side rather than being constructive. That's the thing that people watching parliament on TV get really fed up with. They see all this nitpicking and these personality attacks, rather than constructive dialogue. People wonder why people have such a low opinion of politicians. It is because they see the behaviour—

Patrick Gorman (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Western Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

So it's Labor's fault, is it? It's Labor fault—

Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Perth!

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

This is a really critical period in the history of our nation. We have been delivering. We have been delivering, delivering and delivering time and time again, and the vaccine rollout is reaching its targets. We all acknowledge there were hiccups and things got off the rails. The vaccines that we had signed contracts for were not delivered because of a higher authority rather than because of AstraZeneca. The company was willing to send it, but the EU blocked its export. We couldn't get any Pfizer from America because they weren't exporting any out of America. Their whole supply was predicated upon it being available for the US first. We got Moderna contracts in place. We got a Novovax contract in place. We have 28 million doses on order, and they will eventually be way more than is needed. We've placed forward orders for booster doses out to 2022-23. So there has been a strategy and it has been effective.

You can't expect 25 million people to be vaccinated in one go. There is just physically not enough logistics. But, from the way those on the other side carry on, one would think it's just hey presto. It isn't. Every arm of the vaccinations system has been ramped up pro rata to the availability of vaccines. We have 5,000 general practices and 3,600 community pharmacies now registered, and once these extra supplies come in I expect we will see that the figure will be higher than that record figure of 268,000 that I just mentioned. Now that we've got it rolling, I think the targets that have been set for December are accurate. There needs to be community willingness, which there is now, because we have suffered from our own success. We didn't see the high rates of death and the hospitals being flooded. Because we had been so successful, many people thought there wasn't much risk. But now they realise that vaccination is a critical part of the response.

We have also purchased drugs to treat people if they are sick. There is remdesivir and sotrovimab, a monoclonal antibody that blocks the delta version and other versions from attaching to the ACE receptor so that they don't get into the cells to make people really sick. On early treatment, many physicians around the country, in Melbourne, Sydney and elsewhere, are using off-label drugs to prevent severe progression of disease. So there are things that we have covered— (Time expired)

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the Arts) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

First of all, before I start, I've been provided with additional information by the member for New England subsequent to a point of order that I made during question time. I want to unconditionally withdraw the allegation I made with respect to the member for New England. I want to put that down at the start. I do not in any way, though, resile from the fury when the Prime Minister is seeking to claim poor motivations on the part of the Labor Party when we are fighting for our communities.

When we hear the previous speech claiming that somehow Labor is trying to drag down the government response, or we hear the Prime Minister claim, 'It doesn't matter how you start the race,' can I tell you: it matters, because our communities are living that neglect right now. The Prime Minister started badly, and then, because of the actions of the state premiers overruling him on lockdowns and keeping us safe last year, he went on a victory lap and didn't turn up for the second half. What has that meant in our communities now?

The Prime Minister should go and try to tell the people who are homeschooling, where English isn't their first language and they're in homes where there are more people than rooms, that it doesn't matter how they started the race. His neglect is why they're in that situation now. He should go and tell the people in the construction industry, who are wondering what's going to happen to their book of jobs, that it doesn't matter how you start the race. They're in a mess right now financially because of his neglect. He should tell the people at Canterbury Hospital, as we start to watch the wards fill up because of what's happening now, that it really doesn't matter because people are going to be vaccinated in the months to come.

Then we hear people blame our communities, saying, 'They're hard to communicate with.' We had somebody sleep overnight in the middle of winter outside Lakemba Mosque to try to make sure he was first in the vaccination queue for the next day. We had people turning up to Bankstown Sports Club being sent away at the end of the day because they weren't able to get vaccinated. Right now, for us here in Canberra, people are talking about getting vaccinated to try to make sure we're guarded against the future. People are desperate in Sydney and in Melbourne, and, we're about to find, in the ACT right now, and all around the country from time to time, where the vaccination issue isn't about the future; it's about right now and the frustration that it wasn't available the month before that, or the month before that or the month before that.

Think of the people who work in construction. What's thought in Sydney, where you can't go to work unless you're vaccinated? I've had two people now contact my office whose medical advice because of pre-existing conditions is that there is only one vaccine their GP is recommending for them. They are now being told they can't go to work for six to eight weeks. Why? Because this Prime Minister didn't do his job. That's not a political slogan. That's a lived reality in lockdown areas right now.

How do you think it got into the community were it not for failures of quarantine? We still have a situation where, if you're not at Howard Springs, quarantine is happening in the most populated parts of our nation, in facilities that were built for tourism—this is for an airborne virus. Vaccination is the way out of this; we get that. But the government didn't do world's best practice. Please don't tell me that we should be proud of having record days of vaccination when we are starting from a base that has left our biggest cities as disaster zones. We now have the fear in far western New South Wales that something we had kept out of remote First Nations communities for so long could be there. That would not have been the same risk if the Prime Minister had done his job on quarantine and vaccination. Please don't think this is a slogan. It's a lived reality. Please don't think the anger is a game. It is a frustration, because we're here right now not just wanting a better deal for our communities; we want them to be alive. We want the members of our communities to not end up in intensive care; we want them to be able to go to work. And they are questioning whether these things are going to happen for a very simple reason: the Prime Minister didn't do his job.

Michelle Landry (Capricornia, National Party, Assistant Minister for Northern Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Over the past 18 months, Australia has been challenged like never before. A once-in-a-century global pandemic has inflicted carnage all across the world, and the impacts have been profound—on families, on children, on the elderly and on business. This virus has meant that consequences have been felt across every corner of our society. There is no doubt that the effect of lockdowns, interstate border closures, and financial and mental health pressures continue to be profound. Unfortunately, COVID-19 continues to wreak havoc in the lives of millions of Australians.

However, despite these enormous difficulties, I'm so proud of what we have achieved together so far as a nation. Australians have stood together. We have looked out for each other and we have followed the health advice. As a federal government our focus has always been on suppressing the virus, rolling out the vaccine, securing our economic recovery, protecting jobs and guaranteeing the essential services that Australians rely on. During what is a very difficult time in our nation's history, I'm proud that the Morrison government has stepped up and delivered on each of these fronts.

Our delivery of the vaccine rollout is kicking up and hitting its stride. Over 14 million vaccine doses have now been administered, and we now are hitting over 1.3 million doses each week. Just think about that—the population of Adelaide vaccinated in a single week. This is an absolutely wonderful effort. On that note, I want to express my thanks and appreciation to all our health workers across the nation, who are the front line, delivering the doses every single day and putting in enormous hours to keep us safe. In July, a total of 4.5 million vaccinations were given, which is more than double that achieved in May, when 2.1 million doses were done. Sure, we've had our problems. Indeed, no country on earth has gotten their response perfectly right. But what is most important is that we have turned the corner, and I must say that we have also got a lot of things right.

Our government's response, our measures and our support packages in this global pandemic have saved more than 30,000 lives. Our government has supported over three million Australians through JobKeeper and has also ensured that one million Australians have gotten back into work. Importantly, one of the earliest and most decisive measures that we took as a government was to close our international border. There is no doubt in my mind that the Prime Minister's strong leadership on this has saved many, many lives.

As the federal member for Capricornia, I saw firsthand how Central Queensland was impacted by the virus. I wanted to take this opportunity today to highlight what a tremendous difference our government support measures secured on the ground. One example was JobKeeper. Last year there were 1,828 businesses in the Rockhampton area who relied on this crucial program to pay their staff; and, in Yeppoon, 580. As one local businessman in Rockhampton told me, in just one week in March last year he had more than $1 million in forward bookings cancelled. He was very concerned for his staff, who are loyal, decent, hardworking people. What I'm so pleased about is that the financial support delivered by JobKeeper allowed him to keep his staff actively engaged in the business.

As another local example, our $94 million zoos and aquariums program also provided crucially important assistance with animal welfare costs. As members would know, these businesses are heavily reliant on international visitors. Although domestic tourism is recovering, zoos and aquariums continue to experience reduced revenue streams as domestic visitors spend less money and don't visit mid-week and between school and public holidays. The Rockhampton Zoo, Cooberrie Park Wildlife Sanctuary and Koorana Crocodile Farm all received funding, and we're very grateful for the support provided by the federal government.

Despite the challenges, the people of Australia can be assured that the Morrison government remains firmly committed to securing our nation's recovery out of this global pandemic.

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

You just saw from the member for Watson and from the Leader of the Opposition that there is huge anger on this side, anger that is represented in communities across this country, because in the last 18 months all of the huge work that communities, healthcare workers, cleaners and transport workers across this country did—heroes of the Australian people, keeping us safe—has been squandered by this stupid, stupid, foolish government that could not do its job. If you want to see the impact of this government's, the Morrison-Joyce government's, absolute failures and the absolutely useless way in which it has handled this pandemic, you just have to look at what is happening around this country at the moment.

We have Sydney in extended lockdown, with another 345 cases today and, tragically, another two people losing their lives. We have Melbourne in lockdown for at least another week, trying to stamp out the embers of a virus spread as we fight to drive up vaccination rates. We've got regional Victoria only just out of lockdown—but only just, and we're pretty nervous about what the future will bring. Queenslanders are in masks, with cases from their latest outbreak still bubbling away—luckily in quarantine. South Australia is imposing a second round of quarantine on returning athletes, fearful of what an outbreak of the delta variant will mean in that community. And more recently we have seen the ACT go back in lockdown, after a full year without any cases. To quote the ACT Chief Minister:

This is by far the most serious public health risk the ACT has faced in the past 12 months …

We are now more than 18 months into this pandemic, but things are as bad as they have ever been. Australians went through so much last year to beat back this virus, to achieve some of the best health and economic outcomes in the world—but for what? Australians deserve better than this.

The Prime Minister had two jobs—to roll out the vaccine and to properly fix quarantine. It is frustrating, it is infuriating and it is devastating to see where we are today. It's devastating for families, and particularly for our children who are thrown in and out of homeschooling. It's devastating for the businesses who have no certainty on when their doors can open, or how long they will be open for. It's devastating for families separated from loved ones overseas or interstate. It's devastating for young people missing out on their formative years, and for older Australians unable to share some of their last valuable time with the people that they love. It is devastating for the workers excluded from the economic support that they need. And, of course, it is devastating for those who get seriously ill, those who have to rely on ventilators just to breathe and those who lose their lives.

We cannot lose sight of the human cost of this pandemic and the human cost of the Morrison-Joyce government's failures. Real leadership and real leaders step up in good times and in bad. Not this Prime Minister. It's not his job. He's not to blame; he doesn't hold a hose; it's the state's job. He didn't order enough vaccines to keep us safe, but he blames other nations for getting in first. He said it's not a race, but then he blames Brendan Murphy for saying that originally, apparently. He failed to vaccinate aged-care workers by Easter, but he says it's their fault because they didn't go to the GP for a jab. He promised four million Australians they'd be vaccinated by March. He managed only 600,000, but that isn't his fault. There have been 27 outbreaks in quarantine—not his responsibility, even though quarantine is explicitly in the Constitution as a Commonwealth responsibility.

More than 600 Australians have died from COVID in aged-care facilities, which is a federal responsibility, but the Prime Minister says that was the states' fault. Vaccine hesitation? That's ATAGI's fault. Lockdowns in Victoria? Daniel Andrews is responsible for that, although I know the member for Higgins said it was 'just like the flu' and they should open a little bit earlier. The failure to lockdown Sydney early enough? The Premier is responsible, even though the Prime Minister egged her on to not lock down. Then we have the members for Dawson and Hughes and Senators Canavan and Rennick actively undermining public health, but he says, 'Free speech is perfectly okay.' That's what we have from this Prime Minister. When something goes well, he can't get there quick enough to get his photo-op. But, when something goes wrong, he spins, he deflects and he does not tell the truth. This Prime Minister is clearly not up to the job. It's time he stepped up, but, if he doesn't, he should get out of the way. The Australian people should vote him out at the next election. (Time expired)

Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker Wallace, you'd be well versed in that Australian poem Said Hanrahan. I'm afraidHanrahan has been breathing on the other side of the House. I've never heard such a group contagion of 'glass half-empty-itis'. What we need is a little less of what's going on in the rest of the world. If you read widely enough and watched the SBS television news for a change, you'd have some idea. Just to bring you up to date: there have been 205 million cases in the world and 4.32 million deaths. In the US, we've seen 36 million people infected and 619,000 have died. In India, 32 million have been infected and 430,000 have died. In Brazil, 20 million have been infected and over half a million have died. In Russia, 6.4 million have had this disease and 164,000 have died. In France, 6.37 million have caught it and 112,000 have died. In the UK, which is held up as some kind of shining light, over six million have had the disease and 131,000 have died. Here in Australia, 37,000 have caught COVID—not 370,000, not three million—and we've had 944 deaths; not 944,000 but fewer than 1,000. Of course we could have done better, but it's pretty hard to find a nation in the world that's done any better than Australia.

On the economy, it's exactly the same story. We've done better than almost any comparable economy in the world. Our GDP is higher than it was in February 2020, before we entered the pandemic. Employment in Australia is higher than it was in February 2020, when we entered the pandemic. Our unemployment is the lowest it's been in 10 years—in fact, it's the lowest it's been in all but three years out of the last 25. That's a pretty good outcome. Once again, we could do better, but it's pretty hard to find a nation in the world that's done any better than Australia. How have we done that? It's been on the back of an $89 billion injection into JobKeeper, one of the smartest schemes ever devised by government to help out a population in crisis. We know that 3.8 million Australians have accessed JobKeeper, $35 billion was put in to boost the cash flows of businesses and not-for-profits and $20 billion went into the JobSeeker COVID supplement. Personal income tax cuts have come along at the same time, and we've installed the loss carry-back provisions. Then we've had the stimulus programs, like HomeBuilder, which has sent home building through the roof. The pace of construction around Australia is absolutely flat out. In an electorate like Grey we've seen an incredible amount of infrastructure investment, with over $1 billion of federal government programs or money sitting on the table for roadworks in Grey at the moment. We've never had that kind of input before. The aviation and tourism industries have benefited. We've seen $900 million for extra university places, and for JobTrainer another $500 million.

The vaccination program has drawn a fair bit of criticism. Yes, it was a slow and disappointing start, but despite what has been said in this place, we backed five different vaccination lines: the Pfizer/BioNTech, which is now coming to Australia in greater numbers; the Oxford-AstraZeneca; the Moderna, which has only just been approved for use in Australia but is on its way now; the Novavax, which is still undergoing approvals; and COVAX, which is a multinational approach. We've backed all of those with over $6 billion. We also backed the University of Queensland to develop our own domestic supply, and unfortunately that very promising vaccine hit a problem with false identification of HIV. I point out, on AstraZeneca, that we backed the company to make a vaccine onshore. The much maligned AstraZeneca vaccine, at this stage, has been the backbone of many nations' vaccination programs. But one way or another those opposite seek to undermine the government's efforts, as we have heard in the discussion on this motion. Some people in Australia have taken pot shots at AstraZeneca with very poor information to back them up. Across the board, I'd say the government has done a pretty good job. Sure, we could have done better, but it's hard to find a place where they have done better.

Emma McBride (Dobell, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Mental Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

[by video link] My community don't need to be told how good Australia's response to COVID-19 is when their vaccines are being ripped away. As a pharmacist and a local MP, I'm devastated to see people who've booked a jab not be able to have their jab, to see businesses fold and to see students stuck at home struggling without devices that they need to support them. I've lost count of the number of times this government has failed my community on the Central Coast of New South Wales throughout this pandemic. The botched vaccine rollout, the quarantine breaches and the lack of financial support during lockdown have left people confused, angry and afraid. And what we see time after time is this government failing to take responsibility for their actions.

In my community, one in five people are aged over 65, vulnerable or exposed, and when the rollout first began in February we were relieved to hear that all aged-care workers would be vaccinated by Easter. It's now August and just over one-third of aged-care workers have received both doses. There are frontline workers at risk, as are the people who they care for. They should have been at the front of the queue, but instead they're waiting in line with the rest of us. There are countless local people on the Central Coast who are still waiting to get their first dose, and we're in week 7 of lockdown. We're being told repeatedly that the way out of lockdown is through vaccination—and as a pharmacist I know that—but at the same time locals have had their appointments cancelled because their vaccines were being redirected to year 12 students in Sydney. Locals are expected to accept that we're counted as part of Greater Sydney for lockdown but we're part of regional Australia when vaccines are being redirected.

Last week I asked the Prime Minister about this in question time. What did he say? What was his answer to my community? He said the federal government did not support the initiative to redirect those doses away from the Central Coast. But what did he do about it? My community is now stuck in the middle of a fight between the Prime Minister and the Premier, and the Prime Minister refuses to accept responsibility. This was avoidable. It was preventable. It wouldn't have happened if the Prime Minister had secured enough vaccines in the first place for all Australians.

Now we see vulnerable people at risk and not vaccinated; people like Nadine from Gorokan. Nadine is an unpaid carer who looks after her two elderly parents at home. She was told by her GP she needed Pfizer because she has a stent and other medical issues. Nadine booked her appointment and then found out her dose was being redirected to Sydney. She said, 'It caused my great distress seeing happy, smiling students on TV getting their vaccine while I remain a vulnerable carer locked down.' If the government hadn't botched the vaccine rollout, Nadine and others like her would be vaccinated right now. They'd be safe and protected.

Not only has the government failed to secure enough vaccines; they've failed to secure enough places for people to access them, delaying access to thousands of Australians by not including pharmacies in the rollout earlier. The government says to go to your pharmacist and get a jab, but how can people? As a pharmacist and a trained immuniser, I know pharmacists across Australia have been ready to be part of the rollout for months, but they've been sidelined by this government. It's only this past week that pharmacies on the coast have been able to administer vaccines. How can you expect people to get vaccinated when you're redirecting their vaccines from the area and didn't include pharmacies in the rollout from the beginning? We've seen the vaccination rates that countries across the world have been able to reach safely and effectively when pharmacies have been involved from the beginning.

If that weren't enough, there's also the issue of financial support for people in lockdown. When stay-at-home orders were first issued seven weeks ago, local workers and business owners on the coast were left with bills to pay, cancellations to process and little certainty about the future. The government brought out JobKeeper and, in another fight between the Prime Minister and the New South Wales government, my community was left behind. Instead, just $500 was offered to individual workers to help them get through. That's less than an apprentice's wage. How are a young family on the coast supposed to support themselves on that? After calls for more support, the government reluctantly agreed to increase payments. Why didn't they offer them in the first place? Now we hear of more support in Melbourne. While it's welcome, of course, people on the coast are still being left behind.

These things add up. We're in the middle of a health crisis and Australians need a government they can rely on. But we can't rely on the Morrison Government. Telling us that populations the size of Adelaide, Newcastle or the Gold Coast are vaccinated while we can't get a jab isn't good enough. What we've come to expect from this government is being too slow to act, refusing to take responsibility for their actions and relying on spin to avoid answering the tough questions in the middle of a global pandemic. People in my community on the Central Coast deserve better. They're paying the price for this government's inaction.

Katie Allen (Higgins, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This government has not only taken the full brunt of this crisis on the chin; it has delivered the outcomes that every Australian needs and requires—and that has been from the very start of this pandemic. What is quite extraordinary about this pandemic is the daily ongoing onslaught of COVID not just here in Australia but right across the world. The fact that we have dealt with this dual health and economic crisis in such a good way is something all Australians should be proud of. We should be proud because we understand that the executive government has taken the right decision each and every step of the way. There has been aggressive suppression of COVID. You don't get aggressive suppression of COVID unless you have masks, PPE and sovereign supply. Done. You need to have enough COVID tests. Done. You need to have mental health support to ensure people can keep going. Done. You need to make sure we have the economic supports in place to ensure unemployment rates that are the lowest in over a decade. Done. You need to provide $84 billion in JobKeeper to help support jobs and to help businesses survive what has effectively been equal to the Great Depression and the Spanish flu coming at this country at speed. Done. You need to have cash flow boosts of $39 billion. Done. There are so many things we have done to make sure the Australian economy has kept going and the Australian healthcare system has kept going and kept doing what it does best, which is supporting Australians each and every day.

The way the other side goes on, you wouldn't think we've delivered all these things. What the other side are very good at is talking down Australians, talking down the Australian economy and talking down the Australian response. I'm very proud that, despite the fact the COVID pandemic has blown twists and turns at us every step of the way, this government has stood firm and has made the right decisions—decisions that have been strategic, that have been effective and that have delivered. All Australians should be very confident in the decisions that have been taken. Early on in the pandemic, we closed our borders internationally and took steps that no other country has taken—steps that were brave, strong and certain.

The other side is all about talking down this government's response. That is on the edge of dangerous; I believe it is irresponsible. When people hear that there are difficulties with the COVID rollout, some people understand that there has been a supply issue and there have been side effects—issues that are well beyond the control of any government. We've had a diversified portfolio of vaccines. Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Moderna are all coming online. Novavax is coming online next year, because the pharmaceutical company itself has to get through some regulatory hoops that it has to deal with over in the United States. So we know that we've had a diversified portfolio. But, more than that, we knew that we would have to have sovereign supply because we had difficulties with PPE, masks and tests early on. The minister for health should be congratulated for the magnificent work he's been doing on securing supply in a very difficult international scenario. This is not an Australian problem, it is a global problem. But Australia has navigated through the storm of the COVID pandemic with a great sense of determination and the executive has been working in a strong and certain way to make sure Australia comes through this in the best situation possible.

When we look at the COVID vaccine rollout, the mocking from the other side is not helpful. We need a moment when we come together and realise that we are now delivering a vaccine rollout at speed. We have had 14 million vaccines delivered. Yesterday was a record day—260,000 vaccines were rolled out yesterday. Australians are putting their arms forward and getting that vaccine jab, because we know that is the best way we can move to the next phase.

The Prime Minister has led a country that has had to deal with a lot of different problems, and he has done it by bringing together the national cabinet. Yes, working across different levels of government has been difficult. The national cabinet has helped to make that as smooth as possible. We all know that, when decisions are very difficult, it can be complicated—there can be a lot of noise and friction. But, at the end of the day, Australians want people to come together. Those opposite keep talking down the vaccine rollout. It is not helping vaccine hesitancy. I'm pleased to hear that young people are now putting their arms forward for AstraZeneca. That's a great thing because AstraZeneca, Pfizer and now Moderna are going to help deliver a vaccine rollout for this country.

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

I feel like I've entered a parallel universe. The topic of this debate is the impact of the government's failures in the pandemic. We've had four government speakers now tell us, one after the other, how well everything is going! That's all the Prime Minister has had to say for the last two weeks—it's going terrifically well! What a great job we've done! There's a national emergency. Sydney, our biggest city, is in a never-ending lockdown, with people dying every day and fighting for their lives. My home town of Melbourne is in its sixth lockdown and people are scared, desperate to get a vaccine. They can't get one.

And this foolish motormouth, the member for Higgins—I wrote down her quotes: 'Well, the government is delivering the outcomes every Australian needs and requires.' Then, 'The government is doing a very good job.' She said, 'We've dealt with this crisis in such a good way that all Australians should be proud.'

Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Bruce will withdraw that statement about the member for Higgins.

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

Sure, I withdraw. And then she said, 'We made the right decisions; it's effective.' The right decision would have been getting the vaccines here and not being the last in the developed world. The right decision would have been taking their responsibility under the Constitution for quarantine and having a safe national quarantine system, not one that has leaked 27 times causing tens of billions of dollars of damage and hundreds of Australians to lose their lives.

But we only need to look down the road from this parliament to see the scale of this national disaster. There is chaos right now in the national capital. What's the time, Mr Deputy Speaker Wallace? In 48 minutes our national capital goes into lockdown—the ACT and Canberra. Could there be a more dramatic end to this session of parliament than the national capital succumbing to delta? The Prime Minister told us that he's on a war footing against the virus. Well, for weeks he has been warned that delta is coming and he has done nothing. He has watched it marching across regional New South Wales, taking town by town and coming to Canberra because there was no ring of steel around Sydney, and he failed to act and protect the ACT.

If this is the Prime Minister's war, he's losing the national capital. He prides himself on national security but he cannot secure the national capital, and the impact could be enormous. This population here is unvaccinated. It's the centre of government and national administration. It's the seat of the Defence Forces and it's the centre of our democracy. But as others have observed in the media it would quite well suit the Prime Minister if the parliament couldn't sit, so he could hide from scrutiny. Every day he comes in here he has to be accountable for his rorts, his waste and his corruption. A fish rots from the head, as has been said, and this Prime Minister sits right at the centre of the spider web, pulling the threads with little coloured spreadsheets and pushing the money out to the marginal seats. But he has failed on those two most critical of jobs and the tests that he set for himself this year: vaccines and quarantine.

When the pressure is on, though, he does one of two things: he runs away and hides or he blames someone else. The question now, for the next couple of weeks is: will Australians even see him? He might be back under the doona! Remember that he went missing over the winter break—he just kept disappearing. We actually had to put up 'missing' posters to see if anyone had seen him! Or will he come out of hiding and find new people to blame. As Niki Savva said today in TheAge, 'a cranky man in need of a plan'. That was her headline. She reported him yelling and swearing and shouting like a petulant child on a phone call with the Treasurer of New South Wales—a Liberal guy trying to negotiate a business package. The Prime Minister got upset about who was going to take the credit for the package. Then, as a cabinet minister is quoted about the leadership of his own Prime Minister: 'If you see a problem, throw money at it. If you see a problem, walk away from it. If you see a problem, duck-shove it to someone else.' That's what his ministers say about him! He yells and swears and screams at his friends in the New South Wales Liberal government.

Don't be fooled—Australians should not be fooled by his 'daggy dad' persona and by the little guy with the baseball cap hammering the chook shed. He's a nasty, angry fake and he's not up to his job, as the whole country has seen. But he's not just a shapeshifter, he's a blame shifter. He's not a leader, he's a very cunning politician—he is the master of the blame game. Instead of acknowledging his mistakes he just finds someone else to blame.

Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Bruce—

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

'It's not my job, it's not my fault'—

Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Bruce will resume his seat.

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

'I don't hold the hose'—

Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Bruce will resume his seat!

Mr Hill interjecting—

The member for Bruce, I was simply going to ask you to refer to the Prime Minister by his appropriate name.

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

I didn't call him 'Scott Morrison'. I called him 'the Prime Minister'.

Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Bruce, when you are asked by the Speaker to resume your seat, you immediately resume your seat. The member for Bruce has the call.

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

What did I say that was out of order, Mr Deputy Speaker? I called him the Prime Minister, I called him a blame-shifter and I said he's not up to his job. (Time expired)

Tony Pasin (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker Wallace, following that untidy interaction between you and the member for Bruce, I think it's probably important that I inject some reality into this debate. Let me start by saying that the vaccine rollout in this nation is the single most significant peacetime undertaking our nation has embarked upon, full stop. It's the single most significant peacetime undertaking—roughly 40 million individual consultations; no small feat.

Where are we at, if we're talking about a reality check? One in four eligible Australians will be double-dose vaccinated by the end of the week; one in two will have received their first dose by the end of next week. In the last day, 260,000 Australians have received the jab. For those that come from AFL states, that's 2½ times the number of people you see at the MCG on grand final day. That is a Herculean achievement, and it is appropriate at this moment to thank those frontline professionals that are delivering those jabs, not to mention those Australians that have rolled up their sleeves.

Now, at 260,000 doses a day—I spoke about that being 2½ times the MCG on grand final day—over a week, that's not the population of Adelaide; that's the population of all of South Australia. That's South Australia done in a week, if you like. But those opposite come into this place and, I think, secretly—I might be being unkind—they're disappointed by the trajectory, the ramp-up, that we're seeing. I might be being unkind, but I got a sense of that in the halls as I arrived. You'll get coalition members cheering on the numbers; we want to see them as high as possible every morning. I think there's a collective sigh amongst those opposite, because they set the standard, and the standard they set is perfection. I'm not doing so well on my footy tips this year, but I reckon, if I could submit my footy tips on Monday, I'd be doing okay! Those opposite, of course, are setting a standard of perfection. They're saying, 'We would have done things differently because of course we would have known about the complications with delta, we would have known about the supply issues with AstraZeneca, we would have known that ATAGI might make that less-than-ideal determination in terms of the rollout.' That's the standard they're setting.

If you don't believe me, have a look at the standard they're setting for hotel quarantine. They've come in here full of criticism for that system, a system that is seeing success rates in excess of 99.9 per cent. I can think of some government programs that didn't have a success rate of 99.9 per cent. Do you remember 'cash for clunkers'? Do you remember that little nugget? What about overpriced school halls? That was a classic. But my personal favourite, tragic as it was—my personal favourite because it underscores the inability of those opposite to implement government programs—was of course, famously, pink batts.

Earlier this sitting fortnight, we heard from the Leader of the Opposition that he had a plan. That plan was to dole out $6 billion, effectively, to encourage people to get the vaccine. Someone like me, presumably, would get the $300. I've been vaccinated. It's not going to incentivise me anymore. I've been double-dose vaccinated. But all of this, quite frankly, is nonsensical.

I'm going to set a challenge for those opposite. It's particularly directed at those who made a contribution to this debate, but the challenge is to all of you. You want to talk down where Australia is right now? Put your hand up and tell me what country you'd rather be in, quite frankly. Put your hand up and tell me what country you'd rather be in. I reckon there will be silence, because, quite frankly, you're looking for perfection. This was always going to be a challenging time. We are talking about the single most-significant peacetime undertaking. But if you're fair dinkum that you don't reckon Australia is a place that is safe relative to the rest of the world, because of the actions of Australians and this government, come to the dispatch box and tell us what country you would rather be in. There will be silence, quite frankly, because you know—well, those opposite know, Mr Speaker, but I'm certain you might know as well!—and I certainly know that this country is the safest in the world. (Time expired)

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

The time allotted for this debate has concluded.