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

My question is to the Prime Minister and it goes to the answer that he just gave. Is it a fact that no Australian wants to be a part of lockdowns, every Australian wants to return to life as normal, but the reason why we're in the current predicament is that this Prime Minister thought that it wasn't a race to get vaccines out the door, it wasn't a race to set up national quarantine? If the Prime Minister refuses to acknowledge his mistakes, how can Australians be confident that he won't repeat them?

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

It's all about how you finish the race, as I've said before in this place. What has been achieved in these many months now, despite the setbacks that we had early on in the vaccination program, which saw our expectation of being able to offer a vaccine to everybody in this country being set back some four months from what we originally anticipated, is that it has already been brought back to being able to vaccinate everybody before the end of the year. As each vaccination is demonstrating, we believe we'll be able to meet that even sooner, so the demonstration of the government's resolve has been put in place by ensuring that the vaccination rates that we are now achieving—the fact that we're able to bring forward doses, the fact that we've been able to achieve and realise additional supplies and we have more irons in the fire that will see further doses, we believe, being made available in this country—all of that demonstrates that the vaccination program's earlier challenges have been overcome. Those challenges have been overcome, whether it was the hesitancy around the AstraZeneca vaccine, which many shared, but this government didn't share, I can assure you.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

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

Members on my left!

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

As we stood up for the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, others sought to cast aspersions on it—but not our government. We continued on and saw millions upon millions of Australians continue to receive those AstraZeneca vaccines, which remain a crucial component of the program even now. Even now, that AstraZeneca vaccine, of course, is so important, and it's manufactured—Australian made—right here in our country, in Melbourne, and I want to thank all those workers down at CSL. I have had the opportunity to meet them on many occasions and thank them for the great work that they have done of ensuring that our country could be vaccinated.

Over 10 million, or thereabouts, AstraZeneca vaccines have been achieved, and they were achieved because our government took the decision last August, a year ago, to ensure that we could make them here in Australia, and there are millions upon millions of lives that have been saved as a result of that decision.