Matt O'Sullivan (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Well, Madam Deputy President, the points that were raised were in relation to the handling of the pandemic. The issue of facilities was the nature of the question and, in response to that, I think it was Senator Watt who referenced the fact that often the breakouts in transmission actually occurred as people went from the airport to a hotel facility. That's not going to change if we have a dedicated COVID quarantine centre. We still actually need to get people from the airstrip. What are we going to build—a dedicated airport? I know that's what they proposed to do in Queensland, but how many airlines are actually going to land there directly? How many are actually going to land directly into these locations? We know that's just not practical. What we need is resilience.

That's where vaccines are the obvious key, and that's what Australians have stepped up to do. Australians have stepped up to go and get vaccinated. Sadly, though, in my home state our vaccination rate hasn't kept up to pace with the rest of the country. I don't blame Western Australians for that fact. The reality is that in WA we had one of the best experiences in dealing with COVID of anywhere else in Australia and, indeed, of anywhere else in the world. So I guess there has been a lack of urgency there in Western Australia which has maybe contributed somewhat to our lower rates of vaccination. But it's interesting when we see what has happened of late, since there have been these mandatory vaccinations—