Pat Conaghan (Cowper, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Regional Health. Will the minister update the House on what action the Morrison-Joyce government is taking to protect regional, rural and remote Australians in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic?

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

First of all, I'd like to thank the member for Cowper for his question and compliment him on the sterling job he is doing looking after the good constituents in Cowper. Whether it's the far east at Norfolk Island, or the far west at Cocos Keeling Islands, up in Wilcannia, down the Darling River or down in the seat of Nicholls, there is Commonwealth support rolling out around Australia, delivering the vaccines that everyone knows are the quickest way to get back to our normal way of life, or near normal, and get rid of lockdowns.

Of the 1.8 million vaccines delivered in the last week 502,000 were delivered in regional Australia—outside the big cities. There are 4.6 million doses that have already gone into regional Australians, like in your electorate, member for Cowper. We have had a coordinated plan involving regional and remote Australia from the very beginning, since the early planning sessions of the COVID pandemic. Currently there are 2,541 community or primary care sites in regional Australia. The Aboriginal community controlled health organisations have been front and centre of that. In fact, there are 127 of them fighting COVID with vaccine rollout. We have 73 Commonwealth vaccination centres in regional Australia. The workhorse of vaccine delivery has been 1,518 general practices, including in your electorate, in my electorate, in the far west, north, south—around the country. We now have 823 community pharmacies who have joined the fight to get that vaccine rolled out. I compliment the minister for health's comments about the ADF and AUSMAT teams. They are out there on the ground in the seat of Nicholls and in the seat of Parkes helping everyone else. We have been coordinating with state agencies so that everything is coordinated.

I'd like to give a particular shout-out to the people of Dubbo, in particular, Kaail Bohm, who works at the TerryWhite Chemmart in Delroy Park in west Dubbo. He's been vaccinating day in, day out for a couple of weeks now, delivering AstraZeneca. On the weekend he got a bus out to the Apollo Estate in East Dubbo, where he knows a lot of people, and went door to door. He acknowledges there has been vaccine hesitancy, but they are coming out now. People in country Australia band together. They are rolling up their sleeves. There are big queues. They know that the quickest way to get COVID back in the box and get our normal way of life back together is to get mass vaccination rolled out, and it's certainly happening in regional, rural and remote Australia.