Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's hard to understand just how traumatising it was for the city to be locked down for 111 days last year. It was particularly traumatising for older people living alone and for families, not from rich electorates, holed up in flats with three or four kids they were trying to homeschool. Family violence rates were out of control. Small businesses now have no JobKeeper.

We beat it before, and we'll beat it again, with or without this Prime Minister. But we shouldn't be in this mess, and we need to be very, very clear here: this outbreak is a direct result of the Prime Minister's failure on vaccinations. No amount of spin and marketing and interference and screaming and shouting and blame-shifting in question time or elsewhere can cover that up. It's his responsibility. He had two jobs: vaccinations and quarantine. Vaccinations? About one per cent of the country is fully vaccinated. We've had the 17th outbreak from hotel quarantine in Australia, this one from South Australia. Because of the Prime Minister's failure, Victoria is exposed. Forty per cent of aged care facilities in Melbourne are not fully vaccinated. When this outbreak started, 29 didn't have even a single first dose. He's dangerously complacent. He says it's not a race.

It is a race. It's a race against the virus, it's a race against mutations and it's a race to save lives and livelihoods. Last week, the Commonwealth got 1.4 million doses and they handed out 500,000. There's no public health campaign. In eight years, the Liberals have spent $1 billion in taxpayer funds on advertising themselves. But there's nothing for public health or the vaccine, when it really matters. They are advertising roads they haven't even built, but nothing for the vaccine. This has been one of the biggest policy failures in Australia's recent history, but the Prime Minister takes no responsibility. He just yells and screams and blames everyone else.

Every time there's an outbreak from hotel quarantine, it is a direct result of the Prime Minister's failure to set up safe, purpose-built quarantine. They look after dogs, cats and horses coming into the country—that's a Commonwealth thing—but not human beings. It's so he can blame the states when it suits him. He says quarantine is 99.9 per cent effective. Well, the 0.1 per cent is devastating. The Northern Territory facility, purpose-built, is 100 per cent effective. He's had a report on his desk for seven months and done nothing with it. There have been more lockdowns, more deaths and billions of dollars lost. The best time to start building purpose-built quarantine facilities was last year, and the second best time is today. It's not necessarily a short-term thing, either. It's way too early to know whether we can allow quarantine-free travel to this country next year, even when the vaccine's rolled out. Tell us what the mutations look like.

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister needs to fix hotel quarantine, get national standards, accept it's airborne, put in place ventilation that works and get N95 masks. Get the staff vaccinated; they're not even fully vaccinated. As the member for Dunkley said, the anger at the Prime Minister in my home state of Victoria is visceral. People know that this is his fault and they know it's his failure. They will rightly blame him for illness, future deaths and other outbreaks.

I've been a harsh critic of the Prime Minister. You've heard me call him fake before. I don't like him, I don't trust him and I do not think he is up to his job. But this is serious. Lives and the economy are at stake. So I beg, I plead: for once, step up to the mark, Prime Minister, and do your job. Apologise, take responsibility, set targets, speed up the vaccine program and get cracking on purpose-built quarantine. He doesn't hold a hammer? He doesn't even hold a nail.

Make sure there are no more outbreaks.

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