Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak in support of the COVID-19 Disaster Payment (Funding Arrangements) Bill 2021. Labor will be supporting this bill, because we stand in support of workers across Australia who face lockdowns as a result of this government's gross incompetence in managing the COVID outbreaks, particularly the vaccine rollout and quarantine. Let's be really clear: the only reason this bill is necessary is the Prime Minister's failure on vaccines and quarantine. If the Prime Minister had done his job, we wouldn't be in this situation. This Prime Minister and this government began this year with two simple jobs: get the vaccine rollout happening and build purpose-built quarantine stations to keep Australians safe, to keep Australians in work, to keep our economy ticking over. They have comprehensively failed on both of those jobs, and hour by hour this situation gets worse. We know that Melbourne in recent weeks has been through more lockdowns because of breaches of hotel quarantine and because of the low rates of vaccination in the community—two jobs that the Prime Minister and this government have failed to do.

In the last few days we've seen much of Sydney all but locked down again because of breaches of hotel quarantine and because of the low rates of vaccination overseen and delivered by this government. Only in the last hour we have learned that in my home state of Queensland we now have three cases of COVID, possibly more, and, again, what is the cause? Hotel quarantine breaches and a poor vaccination rollout. The government's failures aren't just talking points, aren't just academic exercises; they have real-life consequences for Australians. We are now in a situation where, across the entire eastern seaboard, in each of the capital cities, we are facing some combination of lockdowns, restrictions, in some cases people losing their jobs and, terribly, some people actually contracting COVID. The government's failures have consequences. The consequences are not only the need to introduce the legislation and put more of the responsibility for payments on the taxpayer; they are costing people their health, they are costing people their jobs and they are costing people their movement.

We look around the world and see comparable nations like the US and the UK having vaccinated tens of millions of people, every week. Every week the US, for example, is vaccinating more people than Australia has managed in months. These are the nations we seek to compare ourselves to and they are so far ahead of us it is not funny. Again, because of the government's failures on quarantine and vaccination, Australians are paying the price. It is a very serious issue that this government is not taking seriously. Three capital cities on our eastern seaboard are facing lockdowns—or have just come out of them—with jobs lost, money lost out of the economy, people getting sick and the potential for things to get worse.

Let's look at what happened in Sydney over the last few days. The numbers started out small from one hotel quarantine breach and have escalated to a point where several council areas—several suburbs—are all but shut down, and now we're seeing it in Brisbane as well. At some point, this Prime Minister has to take responsibility for this matter. He has to take responsibility for the two jobs he had coming into this year—building purpose-built quarantine stations and getting the population vaccinated. I don't remember the exact figures but I think we're talking about, at the moment, four per cent of the Australian population being fully vaccinated—four per cent! If you did an exam and got four per cent, that would be a miserable failure; you would barely even be on the scoreboard. That is the situation the government and this Prime Minister have left our country in. Again, I can't remember the exact numbers but I think we're up to 24 or 25 hotel quarantine breaches. Probably with today's example it's higher still. How many times does this Prime Minister and this government need to see quarantine breaches and poor vaccination rates before they take control?

It is an absolute repeat of what we saw from this Prime Minister in the bushfire crisis. He didn't hold a hose then; he doesn't hold a dose now. This Prime Minister just will not take action. What have his coalition partners, the National Party, spent the week doing? Stabbing each other in the back. How do you think Australians feel when they look at this government at the moment?