Sue Lines (WA, Deputy-President) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak about the absolute catastrophe that is unfolding in First Nations communities in western New South Wales because of the spread of COVID into those vulnerable communities. It was completely avoidable, yet the Morrison government, the Minister for Indigenous Australians Mr Ken Wyatt, Senator Colbeck in this place and, indeed, the Prime Minister are trying to convince us that all is well. It is not well.

Today we have yet another letter from the Maari Ma Health Aboriginal Corporation, pleading with Mr Morrison to send assistance, to put in place specialist quarantine facilities and to help with the overcrowding—something that was foreseeable. This is not the first time this Aboriginal community controlled health organisation has written to the Prime Minister. They wrote to the Prime Minister 18 months ago to say, 'We need an urgent plan.' Senator Colbeck stood in this place today and said, 'Oh, it's all okay because we offered First Nations people vaccines as part of the 1B group.' That's all they did! We've heard about communication failures, vaccine hesitancy and proselytising by religious groups, and all the while the Morrison government is trying to pretend that everything is hunky-dory. Well, it isn't. The Maari Ma corporation know what's going on. They're on the ground in western New South Wales.

We have put this government on notice. Earlier in the week Senator Dodson and I wrote an urgent letter to Minister Wyatt to ask, 'What are you doing about contingency planning in Western Australia?' Many of our remote communities are on the border with South Australia and the Northern Territory, so it's not rocket science to imagine that the disease can spread fairly quickly from western New South Wales into Western Australia. Indeed, we had two truck drivers cross the Nullarbor last Friday who turned out to be COVID positive. That's how quickly it spreads. Yet there's no plan, there's nothing, in place to protect remote communities anywhere in this country. And we've now got the shocking statistic of a man who has passed away in western New South Wales. The responsibility for that rests fairly at the feet of the Morrison government. They're in control of the vaccine rollout and they are in control of quarantine, and they have failed at both of those jobs.

They failed at communication with First Nations communities. They sent white nurses into communities in Western Australia completely unannounced—and they wonder why we've got vaccine hesitancy. It takes communication, it takes elders and it takes cultural leaders to get communities vaccinated. It takes taking the vaccine out. There was the response earlier in the week that pharmacies are now able to give the vaccine. Where do they think the pharmacies are in the remote Kimberley and Pilbara regions in Western Australia? What a joke! It shows you just how out of touch the government are and how they don't really care about what is going on. Western New South Wales is a 'catastrophe'. They are the words being used by the Maari Ma Health corporation. It was absolutely avoidable, and the responsibility sits fairly and squarely with Mr Morrison.

There's time to fix things. There's time to protect other communities. But it needs you to sit down with, listen to and engage with Aboriginal community leaders. Just making vaccines available as part of the 1b group—tick, done—is not good enough. In many of those communities, English is the third or fourth language that is spoken. And what are we doing with our communication? Nothing. In fact, when we met with General Frewen a couple of weeks ago he admitted to us that they hadn't got the communication right. We're 18 months in and we're making fundamental errors like that. We have an uncaring government. The public will judge you. We are watching, and you'd better get to work right now, urgently, and fix the mess that you've created.