Sophie Scamps (Mackellar, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I, too, rise in support of this disallowance motion brought by the member for Kooyong, and I thank her for bringing it to the House. It's not a race—we all remember those four words from the former prime minister Scott Morrison during the COVID-19 pandemic. They symbolised a government that was unprepared and slow to act. So, after failing to promptly secure COVID-19 vaccines for Australians, the Morrison government, under pressure, struck a rushed deal in May 2021 with the US pharmaceutical company Moderna to build a domestic mRNA vaccine manufacturing facility. This was a $2 billion deal done behind closed doors, with no transparency, no scrutiny and no accountability. Not one detail was made public at that time. Even now we don't fully know what taxpayers got for that money. What we do know is this: to date, Moderna has not produced a single dose for the Australian market from its new facility.

The deal bypassed our proven robust systems for ensuring quality, safety and value. Moderna's vaccines were exempted from assessment by the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee, or PBAC, the very committee responsible for determining whether medicines are safe, effective and worth funding through the National Immunisation Program. This decision has created a parallel procurement process, exclusively for Moderna: fast-tracked, exempt and unexplained. Yet the Albanese government has forged ahead with it. It's a decision that has drawn serious concern from leading public health experts and regulatory bodies. Professor Peter Collignon of the ANU has said the PBAC process is critical, not just for safety but also to ensure value for money and informed comparison between vaccine options. PBAC chair Robyn Ward warned speeding up distribution must not come at the cost of fairness, access or safety. Australian manufacturer CSL offered to produce vaccines at a lower cost. They recently invested over $1 billion in a Melbourne facility, but they haven't been offered the same fast-tracked regulatory path. This deal puts CSL and other local innovators at a distinct disadvantage.

So we are now at risk of creating two systems for vaccine approval in this country—one for a single foreign multinational and another for everyone else. This is anticompetitive, and it undermines the integrity of Australia's medical procurement processes. Whilst sovereign manufacturing is vitally important for our country, existing safeguards and regulatory checks must not be disregarded. Let me remind the House that this 10-year agreement commits successive governments and taxpayers to purchase Moderna's vaccines for years to come, regardless of evolving science, emerging options or changing needs. The fact that the Australian National Audit Office has launched a formal inquiry into this deal speaks volumes. We are not just talking about vaccines here. This is about how government procurement power should be used to create a healthier population and a stronger economy.

Just last week the government hosted the economic reform roundtable to discuss productivity and innovation, and yet we still have this deal. Our Future Made in Australia has overlooked the health and medical innovation sector, one of our greatest economic opportunities. We have examples of world-leading Australian innovation—Cochlear, ResMed and others—who succeeded because they had access to research support, regulatory integrity and, importantly, fair competition. We must not create a system where one multinational receives preferential treatment while local companies are left to wait three years or more for approval. That is not smart investment; that is a barrier to innovation. The Australian public agrees. Nine in 10 Australians support investment in local companies producing medical products. They want transparency, fairness and sovereign capability, not secret deals. This comes at a time when the government is currently undertaking a strategic examination of research and development to grow our core science and innovation capability. If we are serious about building long-term prosperity and sovereign capability, we must disallow backroom deals that go against these very principles.

This is not about opposing mRNA technology. It has been transformative. But innovation must be supported by a fair, transparent and accountable process—one that ensures competition, builds local capacity and safeguards public trust. We need smarter investment, not secret deals. We need robust systems, not parallel ones. We need to support Australian innovation, not undermine it. For these reasons, I strongly support the member for Kooyong's disallowance motion and thank her for moving it in the national interest.

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