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

Big shame, Senator Scarr. Their third point: have an effective public information campaign. I am hearing crickets—crickets about information on COVID. I understand why they are trying not to compete with the last government on this, seeing how the coalition's campaign was so successful, evidently seen in the vaccination rate that we achieved. Finally, their last point was: start making mRNA vaccines in Australia—again, a process already started by the coalition government. We worked very hard to make sure that we build an mRNA vaccine facility in Victoria, the state I proudly represent, but Labor have been silent. The government have been so quiet on COVID-19. Their plan is null and void. COVID is rampant in the community, and they don't have the slightest idea what to do about it.

Do you guys over there remember saying across the chamber that we only had two jobs? Well, now you are in for a rude shock about how complex governing Australia actually is. Almost 5,000 Australians have passed away from COVID since 31 May this year. As of 22 July, there were 9,537 active COVID-19 cases and 1,013 active outbreaks in residential aged-care facilities across Australia. There have been 2,187 reported deaths in 2022 in aged-care facilities. And what is this government doing? Nothing. They should reflect on everything they said from this side of the chamber over the past two years and take a good hard look at themselves.

I cannot be the only one in this chamber to remember the Labor Party inaccurately betraying the coalition government's performance during the COVID-19 pandemic. On 8 February, Senator Gallagher said in this chamber:

There are problems in aged care, where the situation is so dire, with thousands infected with COVID, hundreds dying and staff not able to perform their jobs.

On that same day, Senator Watt, who we heard an awful lot from over the last two years on this topic, said that an aged-care facility was:

… in complete meltdown, with the deaths from COVID of 15 aged residents, and 182 residents and staff testing positive for COVID.

I read out the numbers before. They are a lot worse under this government, I can assure you of that. And I could go on. I could pull out of Hansard the records over the previous years and find any Labor senator from the previous parliament commenting on how bad the COVID outbreak was and how much more needed to be done. However, the fact of the matter is that there are currently more cases, more deaths and more outbreaks in aged-care facilities than before. And what are the Labor Party saying about it? Again, at the risk of being repetitive, nothing! The Prime Minister is silent, the health minister is silent and the aged-care minister is silent. In fact, the whole Labor Party are silent. Now that they actually have to try and solve the problems rather than just carping on, all they can come up with is silence and hope that no-one notices. I assure you that we are noticing.

This is what happens when you have a government who carry on in the chamber but do not have the slightest idea about how to actually govern. In fact, it was only in January this year that Mr Albanese was posting on social media saying:

Rapid antigen tests should be free and available. We are in a pandemic. Everybody needs access.

Then, even after the health minister warned that millions of Australians would be infected with COVID over coming weeks, the Prime Minister doubled down on his backflip to not make rapid antigen tests freely available to Australians, with the Prime Minister labelling the decision as a 'legacy of the coalition government'. This shows the Australian people one thing: the government have no idea of what they are doing. Now it might be a bit of a newsflash to Mr Albanese, but you're in government now; you can extend the free RATs if you wish. Even after the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners asked for an extension of the program—and they weren't the only professional body to do so—saying that it would put vulnerable people at greater risk if it were not continued, the Albanese government decided that they were not going to listen to the experts and went ahead and cut the program. Despite campaigning for a pandemic leave payment, the Prime Minister backflipped on his original stance and attempted to axe the payment at the first chance he got, claiming that it was not needed because all workers could just work from home. He was backed up by the Treasurer, claiming that they could not afford it. This was despite them constantly calling for more spending and increased payments while in opposition. However, once again we saw the Labor Party backflip and continue the program after pressure was applied to them by the state governments.

Now I, like many of you, watched Prime Minister Albanese as opposition leader criticising the government for not implementing mask mandates by saying:

That just shows a Prime Minister who's been prepared to play politics, as he is during this period whereby, he's too frightened of upsetting some of the hard right, who are so obsessed by not having any rules in place …

So now you're Prime Minister, Mr Albanese, what are you frightened of? It means one of two things: either Prime Minister Morrison was doing the right thing and, as opposition leader, Mr Albanese was just playing politics, or Mr Albanese is just playing politics now. Which one is it? You can guess. But what we do know is that while those opposite don't know how to govern they do how to dance when their puppetmasters in the unions and big super funds pull their strings, because the only action the Labor Party have taken so far is to remove legislative oversight from their biggest donors. During the last parliament—