Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Manufacturing) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given to questions without notice asked by Opposition senators today.

As the answers—or non-answers, I might say—given by government senators to questions asked by Labor senators today reveal, we have a massive lack of certainty in relation to our path out of COVID. This is not due to scientific uncertainty, as the government has tried to argue in the past. It is due to their lack of transparency and of accountability for the issues our nation confronts.

Only yesterday, or the day before, we heard from the Prime Minister that once we get to an 80 per cent vaccination rate we will have a pathway out of lockdowns and an end to lockdowns. Today we heard that the government is finally prepared to mirror what the Doherty modelling itself shows, which is that, yes, we need higher levels of vaccination, but they are not a pathway out of the uncertainty of lockdowns. Absolutely, we must have a very high vaccination level in order to minimise lockdowns. But, as we have seen from the Doherty modelling, the modelling done by the Burnet Institute and the many previous iterations of coronavirus lockdowns, there is a relationship between locking down and managing the spread of the virus. It's been apparent all along, and yet this government does not seem to want to own up to that at all. Yes, we are in a race to get vaccinated in order to minimise disruption to the Australian community, but that does not guarantee a pathway for us out of lockdowns, particularly at 70 per cent vaccination rates. If we see 70 per cent of the Australian population vaccinated, which we are way off—way, way off—achieving, and we then let COVID rip when it comes into our country, there will be thousands and thousands of deaths. Tragically, there have been deaths in New South Wales in recent days, including the deaths of young people. We know we have to lift the vaccination rate among younger Australians.

We also need to look at the level of vaccination that's taking place regionally. Again, in answers to questions asked by Labor senators today, the government refused to be transparent about vaccination rates at a regional level. How can we have an aspirational target of 70 per cent or 80 per cent and say, 'Yes, once we reach those vaccination rates, it's going to give us clarity about how we manage lockdowns with some efficacy,' when this government refuses to disclose what the vaccination rates actually are in different communities? There is a complete lack of accountability and transparency. This government has given a contract to Accenture for software maintenance and support. They have paid out $6.6 million. We're paying for Commonwealth data. There's a lucrative contract here. And yet this government will not tell us how many Australians are vaccinated, region by region, under its GP vaccination program.

We've got better data from the states, with their mass vaccination programs. You can see from those programs and that transparency that, in Victoria, for example, there are regions like Gippsland that have lower vaccination rates because they're not as close to a large vaccination hub. But what you can also see is that those very same regions have lower access to GPs, and it is therefore more likely that they would have a lower vaccination rate. So here we have this government refusing to— (Time expired)