James Paterson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's my honour to serve the Senate, and through it my constituents, as the deputy chair of the Senate Select Committee on COVID-19. Thinking back to a year ago, when that committee was established in the early stages of the pandemic, I remember quite well the bipartisan spirit in which it was established. The committee was proposed through this chamber on a unanimous basis, and its early work in particular, led by Senator Gallagher, was admirably bipartisan.

Unfortunately I think what's happened over time is that pressure has been brought to bear on that committee and on Labor MPs and senators to walk away from the bipartisan spirit by which the early response to COVID-19 was characterised and to seek to make partisan opportunities from the pandemic. I was listening very carefully to the contributions of Senator O'Neill and Senator Ayres, and I have a lot of empathy for them—as New South Wales senators—for what they, their families and their constituents are going through. But in listening to their contributions I couldn't decide whether their memories are just short—so short that they are as short as the memory of a goldfish—or just selective.

In Senator O'Neill's contribution she said the lockdown in New South Wales is something that has never before been seen in the history of this country. Well, Senator O'Neill, when the restrictions lift in New South Wales, as I hope they soon do—when the border closures soon come to an end—I encourage you to come to Melbourne and try to tell Victorians that the lockdown New South Wales underwent has never before been seen in the history of this country. I think you might be interested by the response you get, because of course Victorians remember the very long 111-day lockdown they endured. I hope New South Wales does not have to suffer what Victorians suffered.

Labor senators, throughout question time, talked about the 34 very tragic deaths that have occurred so far in the outbreak in New South Wales. Indeed they are tragic, and indeed that is 34 deaths more than any Australian would like to see. Unfortunately, it makes me recall the more than 800 deaths that occurred in Victoria last year in our lockdown. Sadly, we have been here before. Senator Ayres, in his contribution, talked about the misinformation that had been contributed in this debate yet, curiously, omitted from his attacks on some others in this place any criticism of his own colleagues in the way in which they've contributed to misinformation in this debate.

He could have talked about the misinformation his own leader, Mr Albanese, has fuelled, particularly the scepticism around the AstraZeneca vaccine and the way in which Mr Albanese has not been able to bring himself to endorse what we know is a safe and effective vaccine, approved by our Therapeutic Goods Administration. He could have thought about his own New South Wales colleague Mr Husic, the shadow minister, who, in his own instance of misinformation a few weeks ago, said Australia does not have any sovereign domestic vaccine manufacturing capability. I hope it was just an error and not an outright lie. Either way, it was a case of misinformation.

He could have thought about the Labor Party's hand-picked candidate in Higgins, who, on her social media pages like Twitter and in an episode of Q&A has baselessly undermined the effectiveness of the AstraZeneca vaccine in a way that is very dangerous, given the millions of doses of that vaccine and the domestic manufacturing capacity of that vaccine that we have. We know from the modelling released by the Peter Doherty Institute just a few weeks ago that there is a statistically insignificant difference in efficacy between the AstraZeneca vaccine and the Pfizer vaccine. Yet we've seen, repeatedly, significant hesitation in our community to take the AstraZeneca vaccine because of the way in which it's been undermined.

They could have instead taken the route of some of their more responsible colleagues. I pay tribute to the member for Maribyrnong, Mr Shorten, who visited the AstraZeneca facility in Melbourne, the CSL facility, and congratulated the workers for the amazing work they're doing producing an Australian-made vaccine for this virus. Senator Ciccone in this place has equally promoted AstraZeneca and encouraged his constituents to take it up, and Mr Bowen in the other place has encouraged them to take it up.

Finally, though, I have to say that I was surprised by my friend Senator Gallagher's question, the final question in question time today. It seems to me that she's not familiar with the road map agreed to by the national cabinet—by all state premiers and the Prime Minister—the final phase of which is that, when we hopefully get to those higher rates of vaccination: manage COVID-19 as an infectious disease like any other in the community. That's the world that all Australians aspire to. That's the world that we should be striving to. And we should do so on a bipartisan basis. (Time expired)