James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Australians are responding magnificently to the calls to get vaccinated against COVID-19, and, like others nationwide, my community is looking forward to life safely returning to normal. Will the Prime Minister outline to the House how the Morrison government is supporting our safe reopening and economic recovery?

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

I thank the member for Sturt for his question. I thank him, because he knows, like the rest of us, that Australia is now emerging from what has been a very long COVID winter, one that's gone past the winter months. This has been a very difficult 18 months to almost two years months for our country, as we've been working our way through this pandemic. Australia, now, is opening up safely so we can remain safely open. This is the time we have been working towards. This has been the goal that we've been pressing towards. Australians have rolled up their sleeves, not just in terms of getting the vaccines. They've rolled up their sleeves, ensuring that they can take themselves, with the decisions they've made and with the resilience that they've demonstrated.

We always believed they would. We never doubted that Australians would roll up their sleeves. We never doubted that they would come forward for what they needed to do in the national interest. They have done that. This week, we will reach 70 per cent double-dose vaccination around the country, meeting one of those critical early marks of the national plan. We are seeing Australians, around the country, starting to reclaim their lives. Eighty-five per cent first-dose vaccinations across the country—that is higher than the United States. It's higher than Germany, it's higher than Israel and it is higher than the OECD average for first-dose vaccination rates. Thank you to all those parents and those kids—60 per cent first dose for 12- to 15-year-olds—responding to that same challenge.

This effort by Australians is now paying the dividends. Businesses are reopening. Families and friends are reconnecting. Children are going back to school. Planes are getting ready for take off again. All of that has been achieved by following the national plan—by Australians getting vaccinated at the record rates that we've seen. As to those states which have not had the same experience of COVID as we've seen in New South Wales, Victoria and the ACT—Victoria and the ACT are soon to follow the road that New South Wales is already on—the rising vaccination rates in Western Australia and Queensland, as we've just learnt from the Queensland government before coming here today, mean that they will soon also be opening up. They also will soon be able to welcome Australians back from overseas, who will be going into home quarantine and, indeed, doing no quarantine as those vax rates rise. It means that those states which have been largely open will be able to remain safely open because of those vaccination rates rising.

The government rolled up our sleeves with record economic support. We've saved lives and livelihoods through the Australian way, and now Australians are reclaiming their Australian way of life. (Time expired)