Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

[by video link] You know what? I've got to pause at the beginning of this contribution to thank my fabulous new team member, Joana Partyka, for putting together some notes for me to contribute to this MPI debate this afternoon. Because, to be honest with you, if I'm left to my own devices with this particular topic I'm rendered almost mute by the deep frustration and anger that wells up inside me. Whenever we talk about what has happened in this country since the coming of the pandemic and the role of this government in mismanaging it, it is almost beyond words. Our community is so frustrated by the endless marketing spin that spews from the mouths of these ministers every time we talk about this topic. The reality of COVID-19 and the Morrison government's management of the pandemic is a reality of failure and double standards. It would be bad enough if disabled people had been left out of the pandemic plan and been actively deprioritised. It would be bad enough had the health minister failed to order the vaccine when he could have and should have. It would have been bad enough if the national cabinet had not been allowed to devolve into a squabbling rabble of politicians all trying to balance their public duties with the demands of their donors, who want to get back to business as usual because it is how they make money. It would have been bad enough had millions of dollars—tens of millions of dollars—been funnelled out of the public door into the pocket of people like Gerry Harvey through the JobKeeper scheme. Those things alone would have been enough to condemn this government in history as the woeful manager of this great crisis that it is. But they have not stopped there. They've added to this mountain of failure by failing our kids and leaving them exposed, right at the moment when we are changing the way that we manage COVID-19 in the two biggest states. The expert health panel OzSAGE has been calling on the government for weeks to fit air filtration and air monitoring systems in public schools, schools across the country, just like the filters that they have recently fitted in the New South Wales parliament. And yet the response of the state government and the response of federal government is to say no. It's yet another failure, putting Australians at risk.