Sam McMahon (NT, Country Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

[by video link] The first thing that I would like to do in speaking on this matter of urgency is to say that I absolutely reject the premise of this. It talks about the need for the Morrison-Joyce government to stop blaming First Nations Australians and instead take responsibility for their bungled vaccine rollout. I reject all of that comment, all of that sentence. Who has said that anyone is blaming First Nations Australians—or anyone else for that matter? And why do those opposite constantly have to find blame? We talk about how we're all in this together and we're all working together and we should have a bipartisan approach, yet those opposite continually politicise this issue and continually want to apportion blame to someone. I haven't heard anyone in this government blaming First Nations Australians, yet we're accused of doing that here, and I absolutely reject that. We're not blaming anyone, yet that's what those on the other side continually seek to claim. Why does there have to be someone to blame? Can they not just join with this government in getting on with the job?

Secondly, the government should take responsibility for its bungled vaccine rollout: there has been nothing bungled about this vaccine rollout at all. Yes, there have been aspects of it that may have been less than desirable, where things haven't worked out as planned, but it hasn't been bungled. Things happen. This is an absolutely unprecedented situation. We're being asked to do something that we as a nation—and we as a world—have never, ever attempted to do previously, so not everything is going to go absolutely according to plan all of the time, but that does not mean that the job is bungled. This government has been exceptionally good at dealing with it and dealing with everything that has been thrown our way. Many things have changed; this is a dynamic situation, and we have dealt with everything that has come our way and we've dealt with it practically and efficiently.

The governments that are actually responsible, as those on the opposite side say, for getting jabs into arms are the states and territories. They've decided that they want to be responsible for health and for the vaccine rollout, and that's fine. They probably should be. They know their communities. Particularly with regard to Indigenous communities, they know those communities, certainly better than the federal government does, so it's appropriate that they should be in charge. Yet we hear, for example, that in the Northern Territory there are some fairly poor results with regard to Indigenous communities. In Utopia, one community in Central Australia, at the clinic there, approximately 10 out of 700 residents have been vaccinated. At Kintore, another remote Indigenous community in Central Australia, it's reported one in 400 people consented to be vaccinated when a team went out there with enough vaccine to vaccinate that whole community of over 400 people.

This failure absolutely has to fall at the feet of the Northern Territory government. Again, I'm not laying any blame, but if they are incapable of doing this rollout then they need to ask for help. We are certainly here and prepared to help and to provide resources and funds where they are needed, but the Northern Territory government are very much in charge of this rollout in Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory. They need to admit that they are not capable of doing this effectively, and they need to ask for help where they are failing in their task of rolling out the vaccine to remote Indigenous Territorians. Come forward, say you're not doing the job— (Time expired)