Sam McMahon (NT, Country Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

[by video link] I rise today to speak about the dire state of COVID vaccinations in the Northern Territory, particularly in remote Indigenous communities. In one community alone, only nine per cent of people have received their first dose and just five per cent their second dose. There are numerous communities where the second dose is in single digits. Just last week, I spoke to an organisation that sent a medical team out to one of those remote communities. They took 400 doses, enough for every single person in the community, and they managed to vaccinate just 14 people.

Some of our general population statistics are the worst in the nation. For those aged 16 and over, we have just 71.68 per cent of people having had their first vaccination. For those 70 and over, first dose is sitting at 86.4 per cent and the second dose is at 70.9 per cent. This is the worst in the country by a long way. The Northern Territory government is not addressing this crisis in some of our most vulnerable people: Indigenous communities and the aged.

Instead of addressing the problem, the Northern Territory government is mandating that nearly all workers be vaccinated or be fined $5,000 and lose their jobs. Have we really come to a society where, in order to have a job, put food on the table and put a roof over your family's head, you must undertake a medical procedure against your will? And this is doing nothing to address the real crisis out there in communities. Instead, it is driving workers who don't want to be vaccinated, for whatever reason—and I disagree with that—to the unemployment queue or out of the Northern Territory.