Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the Prime Minister and I thank the member for his question. It was about two weeks ago that the government announced its approach to market for the submission of fully costed proposals to establish an end-to-end onshore population-scale mRNA capability. What we will be requiring from those proponents is the demonstrated access to the relevant IP for manufacturing processes for technology transfer and production at scale, the capacity to make products available to the Australian government as required and in priority over every other purchaser and secure supply of population-scale mRNA vaccines for all reasonably foreseeable health emergencies. It has to have breadth, so the technology is not just for vaccines but also for therapeutics, for cancer treatments and for cardiovascular treatments. All of these things have to be on a sustainable footing for a facility that will have the ability to produce over 10 years, and an undertaking from the proponents to maintain the capability of that productive capacity onshore on an ongoing basis and also demonstrate the ability to have exports under that model. The member's question talked about a failure. There won't be a failure here. Australia will be one of the first in line to manufacture because of this process.

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