Ben Small (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

We know that the Leader of the Opposition in the other place, the member for Grayndler, likes a buck each way. Instead, it's taken till today for the member for Maribyrnong and the former Leader of the Opposition, Mr Bill Shorten, to finally recognise that Labor can't have it each way when it comes to the Team Australia moment that is getting our nation vaccinated against COVID-19. Today the member for Maribyrnong has endorsed the government's position on adopting the national cabinet endorsed Doherty institute modelling, and that is that Australia must vaccinate and then, in a compact with the Australian people, allow them to live with COVID-19. There is only one contagious disease that has been eliminated from the face of the earth in the last 200 years, so it is fanciful to suggest that anything other than a suppression and vaccination strategy—and that is the strategy of the Morrison government and, indeed, of the national cabinet—gets Australians back to what they want. It gets them back living their lives. It gets them out from under the blanket and allows them to spend their time doing the sorts of things that we know they want to do—get a job and to raise their kids and give them opportunities that they may not have had themselves.

That is the Australia that the Morrison government wants to see, and that is what our track record speaks to. Not only were we the first nation in the world to close our international border; we then set about protecting lives and livelihoods. That included, of course, the devastating economic impacts of COVID-19 in the early days and the record levels of economic stimulus that we provided on the back of that—some $290 billion of direct economic stimulus that allowed three million Australians to be supported with JobKeeper and one million to regain employment as the economy came roaring back.

However, we are not done, because we know that the vaccination rollout is the key to a post-COVID normal for this country. That is why we have seen more than the population of South Australia vaccinated in the last week alone. Whilst those opposite seek to undermine our vaccination effort, that is a higher rate of vaccination than has ever been achieved by the United States or the United Kingdom on a per capita basis. Those opposite seek to undermine Australia's vaccination program, which featured ordinary approvals of vaccines rather than emergency approvals of vaccines in the US and the UK. We know that the reason the US and the UK put their vaccines through emergency approval was that bodies were piling up in the streets. Instead, here in Australia, not only did we preserve the national economy, with Australia's unemployment rate falling below five per cent in the latest monthly figures, but we did so with a death rate that was the lowest in the OECD and comparable only with that of New Zealand. It would otherwise have meant some 30,000 additional deaths here in Australia, even if we had only suffered the average death rate in the OECD.

But do we hear a good word from those opposite about our vaccination program, our economic support and our national leadership through this once-in-a-century pandemic? No, we don't—other than from the member for Maribyrnong, who has finally realised that the time has come not to be painted into a corner and isolated from the rest of the nation as we seek to get the job done, get vaccinated and get back to living our best lives. Instead, in the eight long years they have sat opposite, the Labor Party have learnt nothing about their failures in government, with their ill-thought-out proposal for a $300 vaccination bonus being reminiscent of cash for clunkers, school halls, pink batts and other government rorts with taxpayer money. They have learnt nothing in the eight years of opposition sitting over there. They should have been listening to the Australian people, who overwhelmingly 'speak with their sleeves', rolling up their sleeves in record numbers. When it comes to those aged over 70, some 85 per cent are already protected, and 75 per cent of the over-50s are protected. When it comes to Australia's most vulnerable, 67 per cent of those in shared disability accommodation have received one dose and already 51.9 per cent have received two doses. That is the fact. (Time expired)