Nita Green (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

[by video link] I am joining the Senate today from lockdown in Cairns. We have just gone into a three-day lockdown which started yesterday, due to a case of the delta variant here in Cairns. So this community knows more than most about the ups and downs of lockdowns and how they affect the local economy, and now we are in our own lockdown dealing with these issues.

It was interesting to see the questions asked by opposition senators and answered by Minister Colbeck today, because what's clear is that we have turned around and we're headed down a path that we're not coming off any time soon. We asked questions, and we expected answers, about how many Australians were in hospital, how many Australians had died and how many Australians are in ICU at the moment, and it is incredibly disappointing, and it really shows an extreme level of incompetence, that the minister was not able to answer those questions without taking them on notice. We know that there are 62 Australians in ICU and 371 Australians otherwise in hospital with COVID-19 right now. So it is galling to see members of the government stand up and talk about how successful the vaccine rollout has been, how good a job they are doing and how Australians should be happy to not be somewhere else or in another country, because we have Australians who are dying and we have Australians who are in ICU or otherwise in hospital. We have cities around the country in lockdown, businesses closing and workers losing their jobs.

It reminds me of what the government was doing last year to prepare for this vaccine rollout. We know that Australia is 35th in the OECD when it comes to vaccinations. We rank behind countries like Iceland, Chile, the UK, France, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, Colombia and Mexico—behind all of those countries and more. That's where Australia's vaccine rollout is up to. But what the government did last year was roll out an advertising campaign. I'm sure a lot of senators will remember hearing members of the government talk about their comeback and how Australia was on a path of comeback. You could almost play bingo every time you heard it in a question from the government. They spent $15 million on this advertising campaign to talk about what a great job the government were doing and how Australia was about to come back from COVID-19. Yet here we are, after $15 million of advertising in papers around the country, back in lockdowns because the government failed to do its job and actually deliver the vaccines that Australians need instead of advertising about how good it is. We know that many people in the 1b phase of vaccinations still are yet to receive a vaccine. We know that aged-care workers, disability workers and, yes, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have not received the vaccine, although they are in the 1b phase.

The government are happy to take credit but are never capable of taking responsibility or accepting the blame when they are in the wrong. They're happy to advertise throughout the country telling people how good a job they've done, but they couldn't put advertising in place to tell people when their vaccination appointment would be available, because they didn't have enough vaccines to supply the country.

Finally, I want to address some of the comments from government senators about Labor talking down the vaccine program. Nothing could be further from the truth, yet when you have a look at the Facebook pages of backbench senators and people in the other place what you see is antimask, antilockdown, antivax rhetoric from this government. If the government want to talk about people who are talking down this country and talking down vaccination, they need to start with their own backbench. Nobody is going to take this government seriously on vaccination until it accepts responsibility and makes sure that its own people are doing the right thing and delivering the right message. Australians expect so much more, yet this government is failing every single test.