Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Max Good is 84. He contacted my office a few weeks ago, explaining that he had to make a round trip of more than 110 kilometres—past, literally, dozens and dozens of GP offices—to get the COVID vaccination because his own GP, who has been treating him for many, many years, advised that he had no doses and he couldn't tell him when he was going to get them.

Sadly, this is not an isolated incident. I contacted the Flagstaff Group, a local disability employment enterprise. Less than five per cent of their entire workforce is vaccinated. There is lots of confusion about the vaccination, and they've had lots of trouble finding clinics that can provide doses. There are big problems in aged care as well. One in 10 of the Illawarra based Warrigal's 1,500 aged-care workers have received the vaccine. Over at IRT, it's just 15 per cent of their 1,800 staff. It's not the provider's fault. They had backup plans, and backup plans for the backup plans. The sad story is that the doses just aren't there.

The problem right throughout the Illawarra and Southern Highlands is that the Morrison government has failed in its vaccine rollout plan and it is adding further uncertainty every day. The government has simply mismanaged it from the get-go. Firstly, while other countries were signing up lots of contracts to get lots of variants of the vaccine, our government was not doing that. Then the Morrison government failed to get the doses, once they were provided, through to the GPs. The logistics were all stuffed up, and the net result is we have not enough people getting not enough vaccines.