Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's great to be back here in this place as a Victorian, but it has been an almighty two years in the great state of Victoria. I remember that at a similar time last year, Mr Deputy Speaker, I had returned to this place after a stint in lockdown in Victoria. People forget that Victorians last year achieved something remarkable when, at a peak of 725 cases a day, they managed to bring that down to zero and we experienced a summer of relatively normality. People were able to reunite, businesses were able to catch their breath a little bit and have people through their doors, the great city of Melbourne came alive, and people were able to connect with the beautiful parts of their state in regional and rural Victoria.

And then, this year, the delta variant arrived on our shores. After what was also a remarkable achievement by the people of Victoria, when we were able to squash the first couple of instances of the delta variant, by the second or third this variant had a strong grip on our state. It took hold and we spent the next few months in lockdown as we desperately tried to catch up in our vaccination rollout.

I do believe we are entering a new phase in this pandemic. I don't believe that anyone seriously thinks that this pandemic is over. I know you would appreciate this, Deputy Speaker Freelander. We are now entering the vaccinated stage of this pandemic, and it is a stage where, unfortunately, people of their own accord are choosing to keep themselves and their families vulnerable. A number of families in my electorate made the decision to not get vaccinated, and they are now facing the devastating reality where many of them are finding themselves getting sick and having members of their family in hospital in ICU. To anyone in my electorate of Macnamara in Victoria who is currently unwell with the coronavirus—and there are several hundred cases locally—I wish you all a speedy recovery.

As we enter this new phase of the pandemic, I want to take the opportunity in this grievance debate to first of all say thank you to Victorians for their incredible efforts and for the sacrifices that people have made in order to keep our state safe. It has been the most difficult couple of years that I can remember in my few decades in the great state of Victoria. It's been isolating, it's been difficult and it's been made much harder by some of the politicking that we have had here in Canberra.

I will just take this moment to say that consistently throughout the pandemic the Prime Minister has misjudged the mood in Victoria, that he has made the calculation that, because lockdowns are difficult, he will be the guy who is anti lockdown. Of course no Victorian wants to be in lockdown—and I hope to never, ever go back into lockdown—but Victorians knew who was there during the difficult days and who was there to not necessarily make the decisions that they liked but was willing to turn up and make the decisions to help keep Victorians safe, and that certainly was not the Prime Minister of this country. That has consequences. It has consequences, because I think we have, perhaps like no other point in our history, a nation more divided under the leadership of Scott Morrison, the Prime Minister.

People are speculating that the election might be this year. It would be extraordinary if the Prime Minister were to call the election and be unable to travel to over half of his own country. It would be extraordinary. It's because of the choices he has made that the states have been forced to act alone. The states have been forced to make their own decisions about the pandemic. It wasn't always this way.

If you cast your mind back to the very early parts of this pandemic, it was the Prime Minister and the Chief Medical Officer who stood up in press conferences after late-night meetings—sometimes at 10 pm at night. I remember that it was the Prime Minister who was the one who made decisions, based on the health advice that he was receiving, that applied to the entire country. I am obviously not advocating for one part of the country to be managed by another part of the country, but I do think that it is profound that the Prime Minister, in the middle of one of the greatest challenges that our country has ever seen, dealt himself out of decision-making that affected his country. It is profound that the Prime Minister of in our country decided that he did not want to lead, that he did not want to make the hard decisions for people, and that he wanted to make a political opportunity out of those who have been dealing with the most serious outbreaks during this pandemic. That is what we saw in Victoria last year, and that is what we have seen.

Victorians not only had to deal with the reality of COVID; they also had to deal with a Prime Minister who acted differently when New South Wales was confronted with a similar devastating reality. I remember when we were in lockdown in Victoria that the Prime Minister originally said that the economic support had to be provided by the state governments, that Victorians had to have a liquid asset test and that the support payments would be capped at $500 per person. When New South Wales went into lockdown that was increased to $750, there was no liquid asset test and the Prime Minister said they would go 50-50 with the New South Wales government to support them during their pandemic. There is no doubt that the Prime Minister played favourites, based on politics, during the most difficult time.

There's no way John Curtin was playing political favouritism during World War II. There's no way Malcolm Fraser was playing political favouritism after the Vietnam War. There's no way Kevin Rudd was pitting states against each other during the global financial crisis. But that is the choice our Prime Minister made. Instead of meeting the moment in this global pandemic, he decided to divide—and now he faces a country divided. There will not be an election this year, because the Prime Minister faces the reality and he now lies in a bed of his own making: a country divided and a country split, state by state, because instead of uniting the country he chose to pit states against each other.

In the final part of my speech I want to give a shout-out to the businesses that have sacrificed so much during this pandemic. Our economy has obviously suffered by the sacrifices that we've all been forced to make, but I have hope and optimism for the businesses that are going to roar back to life. In my electorate we have incredible businesses in the creative sector, in hospitality, in retail and in financial services. We have businesses that provide good, high-quality jobs in everything from financial services to gaming development. Macnamara is home to brilliant Australian businesses. But, again, they are facing the decision of a Prime Minister who is willing to pull support as Victoria and other states are getting back on their feet. I would just say to this government that JobKeeper was a huge lifeline for businesses, and it was fortunate that the country was able to recover in a way that meant businesses were able to have some level of certainty. But who knows what this pandemic will bring? Who knows what the challenges will be? As some businesses in Victoria are able to open up, there are still many who face financial difficulties because of the rules we are all living under. I urge the government: please, do not pull support again too quickly. Allow businesses to get back on their feet and then—when the time is right, when there is some level of certainty—the government can move.

So, I say in this place that I have optimism for the future. Hopefully the worst of this pandemic is over, but of course we need to be alive to the fact that we don't know what tomorrow will bring and we don't know what challenges might confront us. But when they do, we must not cower, as the Prime Minister did when he was confronted with difficult choices. We must not leave the hard decisions to someone else. We must not just let the states do their own thing. We must reunite all corners of the great country of Australia. The Prime Minister made a difficult choice—a choice I wouldn't have made—to deal himself out of hard decision-making. But it's time the federal government got back in the arena. It's time we reunited the country. And it's time we helped build an amazing future together across this great nation of ours.