Jess Walsh (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Across the country, millions of Australians have experienced a summer of COVID chaos that they simply did not need to have. There were more vaccine delays and a COVID testing disaster. There were critical staff shortages everywhere. It is yet another aged-care crisis, and none of it was inevitable—none of it. All of it was preventable, if only the Morrison government had listened to any of the experts who were ringing the alarm bells and saying that the government needed a plan to open up safely.

At the end of last year, Prime Minister Morrison was out there urging us all to get used to 'COVID normal', saying that it was time for government to get out of our lives and revving us up for an open summer. But, unlike this Prime Minister, COVID doesn't like to take holidays, and the government should have had a plan for that. Instead, the Prime Minister checked out over the summer—again!—and he did that as the omicron wave hit. At that time, it was Australians who were ready. Australians wanted to do the right thing to protect their families and their communities. They wanted to get tested. They wanted to stay safe. They wanted to be able to go to work. They were ready, but the Morrison government was not.

Within days of restrictions, including travel restrictions, easing, we saw absolute chaos. We saw PCR testers being overwhelmed. We saw people lined up for miles waiting to get tested, only to be turned away. No-one could find a rapid antigen test across the country, and we were in crisis again—a crisis that was not inevitable—all because the Prime Minister failed to plan again. He failed to heed the warnings again. He failed to listen to the experts again. As early as September last year, the Australian Medical Association warned the government publicly—and we all knew—that they needed a plan for rapid antigen tests to support a safe reopening. The government rejected that advice, saying something about not wanting to intervene in the private market. We all saw what the private market did later on!

Then, in October, the government ignored the calls by the Council of Small Business to provide rapid antigen tests. They dismissed calls from small business that they needed RATs to keep their doors open. Even before that—a year before that—Australian manufacturers had approached the government about providing rapid antigen tests made here in Australia for Australians. What happened with that? Government sent them away. They said, 'We don't need them.' Meanwhile, other countries, who had real leaders who were on the ball, knew that they needed rapid antigen tests and started putting orders in with our Australian manufacturers. Why didn't Prime Minister Morrison do that? Why couldn't he see what was happening overseas? In the UK, free tests had been available since April 2021, and in Singapore they were in vending machines. But, despite all of these warnings and these representations from small business, from the manufacturers and from the medical experts, the government refused to heed any of these warnings. They refused to take the advice. The Morrison government simply failed to act, and they left Australians without a plan B. It was Australians who were left over the summer to pay the price for these failures, literally—at $10 to $15 per rapid antigen test, if you could get your hands on one.

I spoke to pharmacists in regional Victoria, and, out of 20 that I contacted over the summer, none knew when they were going to get any supply of rapid antigen tests. The Morrison government turned COVID testing and our health system into a lottery this summer, and Australians are still paying the price for that failure. (Time expired)