Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

S () (): [by video link] The situation in New South Wales is very grim indeed, with almost 30,000 cases of COVID and 1,164 cases recorded today. There have been 94 deaths from this outbreak so far. There are deep concerns about the capacity of Western Sydney's hospitals. There have been queues of ambulances outside emergency rooms, with some waiting for up to eight hours, and there are concerns that staffing shortages will soon limit the state's surge ICU capacity. There is also the crisis unfolding in western New South Wales, where COVID has been spreading amongst a largely unvaccinated and vulnerable population. Yet the Prime Minister, Mr Morrison, wants to declare 'mission accomplished'.

The truth of the matter is that it is going to get a lot darker before Mr Morrison's dawn. The trend is against us. The infection wave has not yet peaked. There is every indication that New South Wales is facing more terrible weeks and months ahead, and all of this was entirely preventable. It is an entirely predictable outcome of the Prime Minister's obvious failures—the botched vaccine rollout, the failure to set up quarantine facilities, and a constant undermining of the states' responses from day one. His failure is the greatest public policy failure in Australian political history, and it's ordinary Australians who are paying the price. The crisis is entirely a function of, and a reflection on, this Prime Minister's hollowman inadequacies, his complacency, his vanity, his refusal to take responsibility, and his inability to distinguish between his own political interests and the national interest. As this crisis continues, these failings are becoming more and more apparent to Australians. Over the weekend, the Sydney Morning Herald reported:

Berejiklian is a Liberal team player who keeps her grievances about Morrison private. But, in private, she is scathing. The NSW Premier has told Liberal colleagues she'd have preferred Peter Dutton had won the last federal leadership ballot—

she'd rather be dealing with Dutton—

because Morrison is so unpleasant. She's described the PM as a "bully". Berejiklian went so far as to tell a colleague—