Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Senior Australians and Aged Care Services) Share this | Hansard source

I think the Prime Minister subsequently said—the Labor Party are wont to go back to historical statements and forget about what's happened in the intervening period—that it doesn't matter how you start the race; it's about how you finish the race. What is quite clear—and what is quite inconvenient for the Labor Party—is that we now have one of the best vaccination rates in the world because of the hard work that was done by members of this government to ensure that we did have vaccine supplies, that vaccine supplies came to the country. We always said the rate of vaccination would increase as the vaccine supplies came into the country, and that is exactly what has happened.

We said we would like to offer every Australian a vaccine by the end of the year, and we've done that; we've done that in spades. In fact, we've got ample supplies. We are one of the first countries in the world to have a whole-of-population booster program underway, and close to half a million Australians have already taken up the opportunity to get their booster. So, despite the fact that we did have some difficulties with the vaccine rollout at the outset, we now have the equal 10th highest first-dose vaccination rate in the OECD. It's higher than in the UK, higher than in the US, higher than in France, higher than in Germany and higher than in Israel. Thanks to the Australian people, we can say that we have one of the most successful vaccine rollout programs in the world.