David Van (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank you for this MPI today. I didn't get a question in question time, so it's wonderful to be able to answer a dorothy dixer—thank you. I say it's a dixer because it is clear to everyone that the Morrison government's COVID-19 response has been an overwhelming success. Has it been perfect? No. The Prime Minister has acknowledged that, as has the Leader of the Government in the Senate. However, the overall response to the pandemic by the Morrison government has been one of the best in the world. That is simply a fact. When it comes to dealing with a once-in-a-century pandemic, there is no playbook. There is no history to guide the government or decision-makers on what has worked previously and what has not.

Labor love coming in here with their hindsight goggles on. I think their hindsight goggles work so well they could walk in here backwards! Maybe they could tell me how I could have avoided getting COVID over the summer, which was confirmed by a RAT which I bought at my local pharmacy. Undoubtedly things can go wrong, and they did, as we have acknowledged. But what is important is how we learn from these mistakes and how we respond to these lessons. This is something that the government has done extremely well on any measure.

You only have to look at the vaccine rollout last year. On 21 March, the Prime Minister announced publicly that the Australian government had a comprehensive plan to offer COVID-19 vaccines to all Australians by the end of October 2021. And guess what? We saw that actually occur. We hit 80 per cent vaccinated by the end of October. No-one said that the vaccine rollout was going to be a straight line or some perfect model that Labor seemed to think was the Prime Minister's one and only job to oversee. Sorry, is it two jobs that you think the Prime Minister does? It shows you're not fit for the job. Of course, it was going to ramp up exponentially. We delayed the rollout deliberately over summer because we did not have COVID in the country. We watched what other countries did. We learnt from how they rolled theirs out. We learnt those lessons and moved from there.

There were countries that had COVID outbreaks that were killing tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people and needed the vaccine more than we did. They got it ahead of us, which I think we should all accept was the right thing. But we still met our promise to the Australian people. The Prime Minister made a promise and we met it. There were definitely hurdles along the way, such as the change of health advice on the AstraZeneca vaccine. However, the government responded to those changes, and now we are one of the world's most vaccinated countries. As it currently stands, Australia has over 95 per cent of the population vaccinated with a first dose and over 93 per cent protected with a second dose, which ranks us sixth out of all OECD countries in the world and must be celebrated as a remarkable achievement.

I think it's important to remind Senator Brown that the effects of the omicron outbreak have had global repercussions which have affected supply chains around the world. It is not just Australia where these supply chains were put under pressure. Globally, we have seen issues occurring. Luckily for us, the Morrison government acted swiftly and decisively to mitigate the squeeze on supply chains and worked with industry at every level to iron out these problems. Decisions, such as on the changes in food and grocery supply chain and close-contact arrangements, undoubtedly had a positive impact on these issues.

With all aspects of the COVID-19 response, the government has followed the expert medical advice. The first three rapid antigen self-tests were only approved by the TGA on 13 October, for supply from 1 November. We started from a different position because we didn't have massive outbreaks. We'd dealt with them at that time. RATs were not a suitable testing regime for delta. But, since then, the government has worked to ensure they are available to those who need them. The Commonwealth provides free RATs to residential aged-care facilities, for which we're responsible. We've already provided millions of RATs to residential aged-care centres. It is the Morrison government's response that has kept Australians safe while not destroying our economy, which the Labor Party would have done. (Time expired)