Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Northern Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Senior Australians and Aged Care Services (Senator Colbeck), the Minister for Government Services (Senator Reynolds) and the Leader of the Government in the Senate (Senator Birmingham) to questions without notice asked by Senators McAllister, O'Neill, Pratt and Watt today relating to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Today we saw a very important announcement by the Queensland government, and that is that they will go it alone on the building and funding of a new purpose-built quarantine station in Queensland. There can be no doubt whatsoever that quarantine is a federal responsibility. It is crystal clear in the Australian Constitution. But throughout this pandemic we have seen this Prime Minister and this government shirk their constitutional responsibility to build quarantine facilities to keep Australians safe from COVID-19. In the 18 months since this pandemic began, we have seen not one quarantine facility built by this Prime Minister, despite it being his constitutional responsibility to do so. Yet again we have seen the Prime Minister being slow to act and failing to take responsibility, even when something is set out in the Constitution for all to see.

The result of this government and this Prime Minister's failure to act is that we have now seen 27 leaks of COVID-19 from hotel quarantine, which have caused all sorts of outbreaks across the country, including the most recent, disastrous outbreak in Sydney, which is now recording national record COVID infection numbers. It is that failure from this government to act and build quarantine facilities, along with its failure to deliver the vaccine rollout, that is causing the lockdowns across the country that are causing so much misery and that is putting the remainder of the country at risk.

So I congratulate the Queensland government on its announcement today that it will go it alone and build this quarantine station near Toowoomba in Queensland. We cannot wait any longer for a federal government that refuses to take responsibility and do its job and that is completely slow to act to protect Australians. This proposal is something that was first raised by the Queensland government in January this year. They have had a proposed site since that time and a willing owner, but throughout the process the Prime Minister, rather than taking responsibility, has just made excuse after excuse for why he wouldn't support this quarantine station. First, he said that it doesn't have a suitable hospital, but we established at Senate estimates that the federal Department of Health has never even assessed Toowoomba base hospital to establish whether it is suitable to support a quarantine facility. His other excuse is, of course, that it doesn't have an international airport. That's despite the fact that Toowoomba Wellcamp Airport currently receives international freight flights on many, many occasions, shipping fruit, vegetables and many other products in and out of this country.

So it does have an international airport and it does have a hospital. What it doesn't have is a Prime Minister who's actually prepared to take responsibility and build the quarantine station that Queenslanders need. In fact, the Prime Minister's ignorance of Queensland is so great that he also said that one of the reasons he opposed building a quarantine station near Toowoomba is that we shouldn't have quarantine stations near the desert. How ignorant of Queensland's geography do you have to be to claim that Toowoomba is near the desert? I invite the Prime Minister to get in a car and see how many hours it takes him to get from Toowoomba to the desert so that he actually has some understanding of the state of Queensland.

The Prime Minister has had an absolute shocker of a week bagging Queensland. First, he called us cave dwellers, despite the fact that we have actually managed COVID-19 better than almost any state around Australia, and certainly better than his preferred Liberal state of New South Wales, which he described as being the gold standard and which he praised for their late lockdown. But it's us in Queensland who are the cave dwellers, according to the Prime Minister. Then he went on to blame Queenslanders for our vaccination rates, despite the fact that the vaccine rollout is his job. What is it with this bloke? Every time he has a job, he can't do it, and then he blames someone else for it. Apparently it's Queenslanders' fault for not having enough vaccines put in their arms, even though it's his job, as Prime Minister, to get those vaccinations happening.

Of course, now we see that he's leaving it to Queensland to go it alone in building the quarantine stations that are his job and his responsibility under the Australian Constitution. In fact, he has even had one of his own senators, Senator Canavan, go public today, saying that, in response to the Queensland government's announcement, the federal government should pull Defence Force troops off the Queensland borders. That's the kind of support that Queensland is getting from this government. They have a Prime Minister who just wants to bag us continually and leave us to ourselves, and they even have senators from Queensland who want to rip Defence Force troops off our borders. This government have a problem with Queensland, and it's about time they started delivering.

Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That was a very sad contribution from Senator Watt. It was a sad contribution from a sad opposition. We had a moment of hope last year, 18 months ago, that those opposite would take seriously their responsibilities as an alternative government and actually work together with the government—and we are the government; the Australian people elected us—to get through a global pandemic the likes of which the world has not seen for a hundred years. Instead, that moment of hope, that moment of light that the opposition would actually take this seriously and not delve into the politics of it, lasted such a brief period of time.

Luckily, we still have the national cabinet, where states and territories are still working together to find a path out of this pandemic. That path has been mapped by the national cabinet, led by the Morrison government. That path is clear to people, and that path is based on an accelerating vaccine rollout. And guess what, Senator Watt? Guess what, those opposite? The vaccine rollout is accelerating. Did it have some issues? It absolutely did.

Senator Polley interjecting—

It absolutely had some issues, Senator Polley, and we have admitted those issues and confronted those issues. The age recommendation on AstraZeneca changed, and that did cause a lot of hesitancy in regard to AstraZeneca. However, that has largely flowed through now, and we see that people are embracing AstraZeneca as a very good, very effective vaccine against this pandemic, along with Pfizer and, soon, along with the Moderna vaccine. And we see it every day. Do those opposite actually look at the numbers that are coming out every day? There were 335,000 vaccines administered yesterday; the day before, 307,000. It's accelerating every day. In the last 28 days—and I'm sure Senator O'Sullivan knows the answer to this and I'm sure Senator Askew knows the answer—how many vaccines have we seen administered? It's 6.16 million—six million plus vaccinations administered in the last 28 days.

And now, from medical advice, we're starting to talk about younger Australians. The medical advice on 12- to 15-year-olds is starting to come through from ATAGI. We've had preliminary advice so far—it's going to be considered by the National Security Committee of cabinet—and final advice, hopefully, will be available very, very soon. Do we know how many people are in that category in Australia, in that 12 to 15 age group? I suspect those on this side do. I bet those on that side wouldn't have a clue. There are 1.2 million. Senator O'Sullivan and Senator Askew could do the numbers easily on 1.2 million, if you're doing six million doses approximately every 30 days. Obviously, you've got to wait that period between administering the two doses. But that age group will be incorporated into what is now an accelerating and very successful vaccine rollout. I remind those listening to this today just how quick that acceleration has been. In March, 770,000 vaccines were administered. By June, that had risen to 3.5 million; in July, it rose to 4.5 million; and, in the last 28 days, it's risen to 6.16 million doses.

Those opposite want to carp, they want to criticise, they want to cast a political lens on this as we head towards an election, and that is just very sad. And I think the Australian people will cast judgement on the Labor Party's response to this pandemic very harshly indeed. I think the Australian people will judge your response to this pandemic very harshly indeed, because this was an opportunity for Australians to pull together. Australians want a pathway out of this. Australians are embracing a pathway out of this. We only need to look at these vaccination rates to know that Australians have embraced the Morrison government's pathway out of this pandemic. They want the freedoms, they want the liberties, that will come with a successful vaccine program, and that is what the Morrison government is delivering.

Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Manufacturing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This government takes Western Australians for mugs. That's the approach this government has taken when it comes to negotiating with the state government about quarantine facilities. We had been promised a new quarantine facility at Jandakot Airport. That's what the Prime Minister promised. And yet, about a week later, that facility has now moved to near the RAAF air base.

In Minister Birmingham's response today, he tried to imply that the state government had somehow insisted on the announcement. Well, I can assure you and I can assume that of course Premier Mark McGowan is going to go, 'If you want Western Australia to sign up to some kind of pathway out of our lockdowns then this Commonwealth government has to take responsibility for quarantine and it has to make public that responsibility.' I'm damn sure that that's what happened. Mark McGowan said, 'Yes, you've got to get out and announce this; otherwise, there's no way that we're going to sign up to your pathway out of lockdowns.'

So what happens is that the government has to rush out and announce this because it hasn't yet done a proper assessment. It hasn't actually done the work yet. All this demonstrates is that this government is extremely late to the party when it comes to taking responsibility for quarantine. These facilities are not even going to be finished until March next year. When you hear these announcements, they say: 'We're still designing them. We're still looking at how they're going to be laid out and what's going to happen.'

All that demonstrates is that this government has done two-fifths of whatever to get this underway before Mark McGowan said, 'Come on, I've been asking you about this for months and months.' Last April Mark McGowan asked, 'When are you going to take your quarantine facility responsibilities seriously?' Last year Mark McGowan was asking, 'Why isn't the Commonwealth taking responsibility for quarantine?' It's only now that the Prime Minister wants to be the champion of freedom and cover up for his mistakes in New South Wales. Of course all Western Australians—and all Australians—want to be free. They want to be out from under lockdowns. But we have had a sure and true path to freedom in Western Australia, which has been to act quickly when we've needed to with short, sharp lockdowns—the kinds of lockdowns that New South Wales required and didn't deliver. It didn't deliver at all in terms of a pathway out of COVID.

So here we are at this point in the pandemic, 18 months after it started, and only now does the Commonwealth government come out and say, 'Oh yeah, we'll build some quarantine facilities for you in Western Australia.' It doesn't seem like the government wants to build any for Queensland. This is all about the negotiations that have happened in national cabinet, I'm quite sure. It's all about how Mark McGowan said, 'Come on, you've got to live up to your quarantine responsibilities, and we're not going to sign up until you make good on taking up your responsibilities.' It's not because this government took proactive responsibility. It's not because this government said, 'We really understand that for Australia to open up'—as the Prime Minister has said he wants it to—'we have to have purpose-built quarantine facilities.' We absolutely have to, yet it appears we're not going to get them until March next year.

These are not complicated facilities. They're not all that difficult to build. The difficulty comes in with staffing them and running them and doing all of that properly. These are not all that difficult to build. This government has finally said, 'Yes, we'll build quarantine facilities,' but they're not even going to be ready until March next year, because they're still being planned and designed. It's very clear that this government has done nothing until this point in time. (Time expired)

Sue Lines (WA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Pratt, I remind you to refer to the Premier by his correct title.

Wendy Askew (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Where do these questions come from? The opposition are repeatedly coming in here to try to twist commentary made elsewhere to suit their political agenda or, as we've seen today, raise anxiety in parents about their children if they contract COVID-19. Taking comments out of context is misleading, and raising concerns by spreading fear throughout the community is not worthy of those opposite.

It has been a very difficult week in this place. With minimal numbers in the building and here in the chamber, we've managed to ensure that the parliament of our great nation continues to function. Yet, once again, those opposite choose to come in here and rehash the same questions and the same themes, attacking the vaccine rollout and trying to belittle the Prime Minister for standing up for and committing to a policy that has been agreed to by national cabinet. The national cabinet's policy is not just the federal coalition's policy. It has been agreed by every state and territory leader across the country: Mark McGowan in Western Australia, Steven Marshall in South Australia, Gladys Berejiklian in New South Wales, Annastacia Palaszczuk in Queensland, Peter Gutwein in my home state of Tasmania, Daniel Andrews in Victoria, Michael Gunner in the Northern Territory and Andrew Barr here the ACT. They have all committed to this plan not just once but regularly over recent weeks during their national cabinet meetings.

The Australian people want their politicians to be held to account and to deliver the relaxed restrictions and greater freedoms they have been promised for when vaccination rates reach the agreed levels of 70 per cent and 80 per cent. That's why so many Australians are doing the right thing and turning out in record numbers to be vaccinated. While those opposite continue to spread lies and mistruths, our government is focused on getting on with the job and keeping Australians safe.

In relation to the vaccine rollout, it's exciting to see the more reluctant premiers finally engaged in the conversation and encouraging all Australians to be vaccinated. Just a few hours ago I heard Premier Andrews urging all Victorians to go out and get vaccinated so that their latest lockdown can end, highlighting the hundreds of thousands of appointments available across Victoria. It is good to see their vaccination numbers are increasing, with over 52 per cent of eligible residents in Victoria having received their first dose. Similarly, in New South Wales, where their rollout continues to gain speed and record vaccinations are being recorded daily, they now have over 61 per cent having had their first dose and 33 per cent having had both doses. That's a massive improvement, and it's great to see New South Wales residents coming forward in their droves to be vaccinated. Well done and thank you to each and every person who has come forward.

While the opposition continues to undermine this national rollout, our government continues to deliver record numbers of vaccinations daily, with over 307,000 recorded in the last 24 hours. In the course of the last seven days over 1.8 million doses have been delivered and 17.7 million doses have been delivered to date. In my home state of Tasmania, nearly 420,000 doses have been administered so far, with just under 57 per cent having had one dose and over 38 per cent fully vaccinated with their second dose. It is disappointing to note, however, that there are still two states where less than 50 per cent of their population aged over 16 have had their first dose. Perhaps not surprisingly they are Queensland, as highlighted by Senator Watt in his question to Senator Birmingham today, and Western Australia. At a federal level we are getting on with the job. The Australian government has secured more than 280 million COVID-19 vaccine doses, including 125 million Pfizer BioNTech vaccine doses. It is time those states that have been left behind also get on with the job of delivering the vaccinations available to them.

Furthermore, the ramped-up rollout is just the start. Not only will the vaccination of Australians help save lives; it will also help us to relax restrictions as we progress through the four stages of the national plan. Our government is taking a balanced approach to this plan, listening to the scientific and medical evidence and taking into consideration the economic advice and impact to set out a clear plan that will return Australia to some semblance of a normal lifestyle. By sticking to this plan, we will give hope and confidence to all Australians and give businesses the confidence to turn the lights back on and reopen and perhaps borrow from their banks to do so and employ more Australians. It will also give Australians confidence in relation to their health that the hospitals will be able to cope and doctors will be available to assist them should they contract COVID-19 even if vaccinated. In relation to the plan, and as you are— (Time expired)

Sue Lines (WA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Askew, I remind you to refer to state premiers by their correct title.

Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Firstly, just to clarify the accusations by the government senators in this debate today that it's us on this side who are out campaigning against the rollout of the vaccine, there couldn't be anything further from the truth. They sit with colleagues on the backbench here in this chamber who have gone out and campaigned against the vaccine. Their own backbench in the other House have been out campaigning against the vaccine. So don't come into this chamber lecturing us. We have been out promoting, very strongly, the rollout of the vaccine. In fact, it was their own Liberal state minister in Tasmania, the Minister for Health, Jeremy Rockliff, who said today that the Tasmanian borders will not open until there is full vaccination, including of children. That's what he said.

What have we heard in this chamber today, particularly about First Nations children in western New South Wales? Forty per cent of our First Nations children have not been vaccinated. We know they're the largest cohort of young people in this country contracting COVID-19, the delta variant, but could any minister give us any figures when we asked today? No, they couldn't. After three strikes in softball, you're out. After three strikes of breaking the law in some states in the US, you go to jail. We have a minister here who is responsible for youth, and she failed on three occasions. After strike 3, she should be out. Not only should she be off the frontbench; so too should Senator Colbeck, representing the Minister for Health and Aged Care. In any other time, the Prime Minister of the day would have sacked the minister for health for a failing such as being unable to roll out a vaccine in a timely manner.

It really gets my goat when I listen to the people on that side of the chamber. They're almost bragging about the number of vaccines that are rolling out now. I'm sorry to allude to this, but the fact is that you're way behind the times. Then we have the Minister for Senior Australians and Aged Care Services, representing the minister for health, coming in here and saying, 'We're still learning about what the vaccine's going to do to young people.' I have no confidence whatsoever in that minister or in Scott Morrison. We know that, internationally, COVID-19 hit the United States and Europe before it came here. Did we learn anything from that? No, we didn't. This Prime Minister was so cocky that he didn't even go out and do his first job, which was to secure enough vaccine to keep safe every Australian in this country. Now they're telling us, 'We're still waiting to learn.'

You need to have a plan. I have children. I have grandchildren. So does almost everyone else in this chamber, and I truly believe that everyone in this chamber cares about rolling out this vaccine in a timely way. But we've had a crisis that the Prime Minister has not been able to address. He's had the job of ensuring the health of all Australians, and here we are today, with not one minister in this chamber able to reassure us and the Australian people that they have a plan to address the crisis that is hitting young people in this country. The delta variant is targeting our young people, and we've got a Prime Minister who is not addressing that most recent crisis. He's failed to protect the health of all Australians. He's failed to build the appropriate quarantine facilities that we need in this country. And we have government senators coming in here with—I have to say—quite a lacklustre performance of trying to defend their government for the failings that they have had. I know—as my colleagues do—from the calls and emails I'm getting to my office, that, for every death that has occurred in this country under the Prime Minister's watch, the government will be judged, and they will be judged very harshly, along with the Prime Minister of the day— (Time expired)

Question agreed to.