Gladys Liu (Chisholm, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Will the Prime Minister outline to the House how the Morrison government's rollout of safe, effective and free vaccines will aid our continued recovery from the COVID pandemic and build further confidence—confidence for businesses and workers to create and get more jobs?

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you to the member for Chisholm and, again, thank you for your great leadership in your community over this past year. It was at this time last year that I was with the member for Chisholm in her electorate down in Box Hill when the first returning Australians from China had arrived in Australia. The great discipline that was shown by the Australian community of Chinese heritage, particularly in her electorate, was extraordinary and provided great protection in the early phases of this pandemic. I commend the member for Chisholm.

Today we've taken another big step with the Therapeutic Goods Administration giving the final full safety approval for the AstraZeneca vaccine produced offshore. That has been provided after exhaustive work undertaken by Professor Skerritt and the Therapeutic Goods Administration. It means that it is approved for individuals over 18 years for the prevention of disease caused by COVID-19.

We of course, I would say, have the gold standard when it comes to therapeutic goods administrations around the world. As we've said on many occasions, when we take our children along to be vaccinated, we do so in the confidence of the work of the Therapeutic Goods Administration and we can have that same confidence when it comes to vaccinating ourselves, our family members and our community because of the great work that they have done.

An important part of this rollout is that the people who need the protection most will get the vaccine first—that is, of course, our elderly population and our frontline workers, who are working in quarantine and aged-care facilities and other work of that nature. The Minister for Health has released the vaccine implementation plan for residential aged care, which means that, in the coming weeks, more than 2,600 residential aged-care facilities and more than 183,000 residents and 339,000 staff the aged-care sector will be reached in. Vaccination for home and community aged-care recipients and staff will occur in the community, and these people will receive information relevant to that vaccination and situation shortly. The vaccination plan, which is on track and being rolled out, has been done with safety as the first principle, to ensure that Australians can have confidence. It's an important part of the confidence in our economic recovery. I note that the Australian Bureau of Statistics said today, according to their weekly payroll data, that payroll jobs are now around the same level as last year. That is an extraordinary achievement for the Australian economy. I want to thank all of those businesses that kept Australians in work. We, as a government, were pleased to provide the support necessary to ensure that they could do just that.