Nita Green (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm very pleased to be speaking on this matter of public importance, which deals with a lot of the issues that we are facing across the country. We know that we are in a situation that we have been led down. We have been led into this situation by this Prime Minister, who failed to lead on vaccines, who failed to lead on quarantine and who is now failing to lead on our health response to COVID-19.

The Prime Minister was too late to order vaccines, and as a result, we've had more lockdowns across this country. Families have been separated and businesses have been devastated. These Morrison lockdowns this year didn't need to happen. We could all have been vaccinated by October. Instead, we were behind the rest of the world in ordering vaccines and in getting vaccines to people. Supply of vaccines was the No. 1 issue when it came to vaccinating vulnerable people and people throughout Queensland. As we've gone through the process of getting vaccines to the people who need them the most in Queensland and throughout the country—albeit slowly, delayed by this government—the government has now been patting itself on the back for a job well done, sending out messages about how many people have been vaccinated. This government isn't responsible for those vaccination levels. Queenslanders themselves are responsible for those vaccination levels. They've done the hard work. They've gone in and been vaccinated. They've sought out the vaccination. This government hasn't done that, and yet it is here to celebrate that hard work.

The hard work isn't done yet. We know that there are members of our community, vulnerable members of our community, who are still not vaccinated. In Cairns, for example, around 52 per cent of people have been fully vaccinated. That's great. People have been getting out. They've been doing the hard work in getting out and getting vaccinated. But we know that only 21 per cent of First Nations people in Cairns are vaccinated. They were meant to be a priority group, but under this government's delays and dithering we have seen our First Nations people being left behind. We also know that these are the members of our community who will be impacted first and foremost when we see cases of COVID-19 circulating through our community. We know that these are the people that the government has wiped its hands of. It doesn't care about whether they are protected when that time comes. I would like to see the government strongly consider those people in their rollout of the vaccine and consider what they can do to increase participation, because at the moment they've said it's someone else's problem and it's only the states that are responsible. So all they've done is to delay and say it's a state matter. Quarantine is in the Constitution, yet the government still said that it was a matter for the states.

Most importantly, what we need to do now is get our health response right, and what that requires is a constructive conversation between the federal government and the state governments. But what we've got is Scott Morrison, the Prime Minister for New South Wales, talking about politics instead of getting things done during this pandemic. We know that our health system is a whole system. In Queensland, particularly regional Queensland, at the moment it is really hard to get in to see a GP. I've been travelling all across regional Queensland. The place where people go when they can't get a GP is the emergency department. We've seen this throughout Queensland. We've got the numbers. The number of people who appear at emergency who don't have urgent illnesses is going up in Queensland because nobody can get in to see a GP.

This government will stand up and tell you that, on our health response and our hospitals, all of that is somebody else's problem and the state government is responsible. But the primary health system is impacting on our hospitals right now, and this government needs to stand up and work with the states. What we won't be doing is to be lectured about health and hospitals by the party of Campbell Newman, a party who sacked nurses when they were in power in Queensland. What we want is constructive conversations.