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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister representing the Minister for Health (Senator Colbeck) to a question asked without notice by Senator Wong today relating to the COVID-19 vaccination rollout.

In doing so, I might make the point that it's very interesting that, after a six-week recess, the very first thing the Greens decide to do when they come into the chamber is to attack the Labor Party. They don't worry about attacking this government for the terrible things it is doing to Australia. No. For the Greens, it's always about political stunts targeted at the Labor Party, because we know that it's the Labor Party who they consider to be the real enemy.

But, unlike the Greens, Labor is actually here to defend Australians, no matter where they live, from the incompetence, the bungling and the shambles that we have seen from this Prime Minister and this government in the management of COVID-19. When COVID started and particularly this year, the Prime Minister had two jobs: to get the vaccine rollout working and to build purpose-built quarantine. We know that he has grossly failed in those two jobs. When it comes to vaccine rollout, we are the last in the developed world. When it comes to quarantine, it will be months, if not years, before we have purpose-built quarantine stations—