Perin Davey (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's all well and good to be very negative in what is a negative and a very trying and difficult time. It's all well and good to, with hindsight, say that we should have had multiple vaccine deals with multiple vaccine companies which had not even put in an application to have their vaccinations approved for use in Australia yet. It's all well and good to say that the Prime Minister has failed, but that is a very harsh judgement.

Our government, under the Prime Minister, has spent the last 561 days working day and night with the health experts and listening to the health advice to try and deal with this pandemic. We were one of the first nations in the world to actually notify that the virus had human pandemic potential. That was in January 2020, at the same time as we were dealing with devastating bushfires and trying very hard to keep our country and our morale up. We were already listening to the health experts. We were already watching this pandemic, and we have continued to work with the health experts ever since. We have worked hard, and our efforts, which initially had the full support of the Labor Party, are estimated to have saved over 30,000 lives. We've supported over three million Australians through JobKeeper, while keeping Australia's economy on track, with over one million Australians getting back to work. We have invested more than $370 million—that is $659,000 per day since the pandemic began—in support for COVID-19 research and development. As at the start of August, we've now got 5,000 GP practices playing a crucial role in administering the COVID vaccination rollout.

Yes, I accept Senator Gallagher's accurate reflection that we missed the target. We didn't have four million people vaccinated by April; that is right. The Prime Minister has acknowledged this and he has publicly apologised for missing the mark. But we have turned that around. We had met the four-million mark by mid-June. We are now vaccinating a million people a day and, just in the last 28 days, we have administered over four million doses, so we are now doing four million doses a month, which has really turned it around. We also have our community pharmacies on board to deliver vaccinations. I also want to acknowledge the work of the Royal Flying Doctor Service, who have been out and about in our most regional and remote communities and have administered 9,200 vaccine doses across 88 remote communities, including remote Indigenous communities.

I also want to mention the important work our government is doing to support other countries in the South Pacific, which are being crucified by this pandemic. Over 153 million doses have been distributed around the world to 137 countries, and we have helped our neighbours and friends in Papua New Guinea, Timor Leste, Fiji and the Solomon Islands get their hands on crucial doses to help their populations because we don't turn our backs on our neighbours.

This pandemic is immeasurable, but this motion goes to show how out of touch Labor is with the everyday Australians. There is so much health advice coming out from those opposite that doesn't necessarily reflect the advice that the experts are giving us. Australians know that our government is behind them. We are working our hardest to ensure that we get through COVID and that our economy is in a position to be able to recover and respond.