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

I can assure Senator Scarr that there is plenty to talk about when it comes to this government's vaccine rollout failures, but it is worth mentioning in passing that it will be months, if not years, before they build purpose-built quarantine stations. As a result, we have seen 27 leaks from hotel quarantine. That is the result of this Prime Minister's failures to do his job. Now, because the Prime Minister failed to do his two jobs—vaccine rollout and quarantine—we see 10 million Australians in lockdown across Sydney and across South-East Queensland. Of course there are many more Australians who are suffering outside of the lockdown areas as well. These are the Australians who are paying the price for this Prime Minister's and this government's failure to do their job: to get the vaccine rollout working and to build purpose-built quarantine.

Why are we here? Why are we now at a point where 10 million Australians are in lockdown, with millions more outside lockdown areas also being impacted by this government's failures? If you want one sentence to explain why we are in this situation, it is a sentence that we heard over and over again from this Prime Minister, and that sentence is: 'It's not a race; it's not a competition.' How many times did we hear that from this Prime Minister and other ministers from this government as Labor was appealing to the government to do more vaccine deals, to get more vaccines out to Australians, to build purpose-built quarantine and to do all of the other things necessary to protect the Australian public from the delta variant that we have now seen raging across so much of Australia? But no: every time Labor tried to suggest things that the government could be doing, just as we're doing today when it comes to incentives, we were told by the Prime Minister and his minions, 'It's not a race; it's not a competition.'

Well, how wrong they were! I can tell you it was a race. It was always a race. It was a race for the 10 million Australians who are now in lockdown across Sydney and across South-East Queensland. It was a race for the businesses who are losing money as a result of these lockdowns. It was a race for the workers who are losing their jobs because of the lockdowns, because this government didn't get vaccines out and didn't do its other jobs. It was a race for the families, like mine and millions of others in South-East Queensland and Sydney, who are now homeschooling and who are now unable to do the various things that they would normally do with their families. It was a race for many other people, millions of other Australians outside the lockdown areas, who are also suffering because this Prime Minister and this government didn't do their job and get vaccine deals done and get vaccines into people's arms.

Only last week, before the lockdowns started in South-East Queensland, I was back up in Cairns and Port Douglas meeting with tourism operators. They were telling me that, after hitting very high hotel occupancy rates of around 85 per cent in May, as soon as the lockdowns started in Melbourne and Sydney, their occupancy rates crashed to 30 per cent. Why was that happening? Because we didn't have vaccines in arms, and we therefore had to have lockdowns the minute the variant started taking control. It was the same on the Gold Coast and in other tourism areas as well. Hundreds and thousands of bookings were cancelled, putting businesses and jobs on the line, because this government couldn't do its job.

So it is a race. It is a race for the people in lockdown. It is a race for the businesses and workers outside lockdown areas, who are suffering. It is a race for the aged-care workers and the disability workers who can't get vaccinated. It was pretty interesting that even Minister Colbeck wouldn't associate himself with the Prime Minister's remarks. Imagine Richard Colbeck being too embarrassed to stand with you. (Time expired)