Kimberley Kitching (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

She's still clearly wallowing in self-pity, having been prised from her previous role as defence minister. In fact, you can probably still see the fingernail claw marks in the walls of the secure room from which they had to drag her. Let me break it to you, Senator Reynolds: you're not getting that role back anytime soon.

To add insult to injury, this is the second incompetent, inept and lazy minister that Australians with disabilities and their families and loved ones have had foisted upon them by the Prime Minister. They've gone from the member for Fadden to the senator for Western Australia Senator Reynolds. While her predecessor's sole qualification was that he was the Prime Minister's flatmate, I laughed disbelievingly when I heard this pathetic and negligent minister boast about what she believes are her achievements and strengths on Radio National this morning. The minister said:

Well, Fran, when I became minister, nearly five months ago, it was very clear to me that there were a number of challenges in rolling out the vaccination program—

One would think that she had some ability to see problems—

to people with serious and permanent disability, particularly those in shared residential accommodation—in over 6,000 small homes around the nation. That's for a variety of reasons, everything from consent to making sure that we provide the right environment, the right supports, to the individuals.

Then Minister Reynolds went on to say, and I really couldn't believe she said this:

As an Army logistician myself, I did what every good logistician does—

'How much are the tickets?' one has to ask—

I got an even better logistician to come in, and we set up a task force for disability vaccinations.

This panicked buffoon actually said 'logistician'. I'll come back to that. She then went into an indecipherable bureaucratic rant, in which she said:

Now, as you've said in relation to all NDIS participants who are eligible, we've also had a 300 per cent increase since I started this new approach, in June. So we've still got a way to go, but we are picking that up fast. But can I also just finally share with you disability workers—we have had an extraordinary response. In fact, since you and I last spoke about worker vaccination, in June, we've had a 200 per cent increase.

So dreadful were these numbers that she kept referring to a percentage increase and not the percentage of those actually vaccinated. If we want to look at the actual figure, it's 28 per cent [inaudible] months. That is it.

Remember this minister talking about how she cares for people with disability? 'What an honour it was to be in this portfolio,' she said—fine words, zero action. Her responses on the ABC this morning and her dislike of discussing numbers would suggest that she's not even the logistician that she prides herself on being. As she should remember, because she's already experienced it, pride cometh before a fall. This train wreck of an interview shows she's not even a good obfuscator, an attribute much valued by this government.

However, this isn't the only area in which the minister's reign of error is being felt. I received an answer to a question on notice today, No. 3926, whereby the minister revealed that complaints received by both Centrelink and Medicare—both under her watch—have steadily increased in recent months. We hear a lot about the Prime Minister shirking responsibility and not doing his job, but I'd like to add one more job to the list of things Mr Morrison will no doubt fail to do: to sack this disgraceful dud before even more people die on his government's watch. This is a message for the Prime Minister, one he'd heed if he were doing this job. He would not have this minister, who's been in for 148 days, cruelly subjecting people with a disability to her bungling. He would get a better minister, if that's what he really cared about.