Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister has repeatedly said that the vaccine rollout is 'not a race'. My community is in lockdown right now because of the slow pace of the vaccine rollout. Will he now admit that it is a race, it was always a race, and we're losing?

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

Last week when I spoke at a press conference—from The Lodge, where I was doing quarantine—I made it very clear to the Australian public that I, as Prime Minister, and my government accept responsibility for the rollout of the national vaccination program and where we had hoped to be by that time, the time I gave those comments. I was sorry that we have not been further advanced. I don't step away from that, and those things are not said lightly. But I also take responsibility for the fact that at the beginning of June we put in Lieutenant General Frewen to oversee Operation COVID Shield, which has already seen the rapid escalation of vaccination rates across this country—someone that the Leader of the Opposition has not every spoken to yet, and I encourage him to do so. Through Operation COVID Shield, we are now achieving vaccination dosage rates of more than a million a week. We are achieving results, where almost 80 per cent of Australians who are aged over 70 have had their first dose.

In particular, as I'm sure the member would appreciate, those in our aged-care facilities across Sydney and across the country are more than 80 per cent double-dose vaccinated. As a result, during the course of this awful lockdown in Sydney we are, thankfully, not seeing what we saw last year, when it was the Victorian lockdown and we saw the terrible loss of life in aged-care facilities in this country. Putting older Australians first, ensuring that we can get more older Australians first, in the early stage of this vaccination program, is saving lives right now in Sydney. I know the member would understand that and would appreciate vaccination of those older residents first. And I'm sure that he, as a medical practitioner in his own right and of great regard in his community, would join with me in saying that having Australians, particularly across Sydney, going out and getting the AstraZeneca vaccine is incredibly important. And those older Australians need to get that second dose. The ATAGI advice says that you can bring that forward to four weeks.

The advances we were able to make by prioritising the most vulnerable and sensitive in our community, particularly those in aged-care facilities in Sydney, has ensured that they have been more protected. Sadly, those we've lost during the Sydney lockdown—particularly those who are older, which is a higher number—are those who were in the community and not vaccinated, those who had had access to those vaccines for some time. So, we want to encourage people to go and get those vaccines. And I thank the member for Maribyrnong for highlighting the importance of the AstraZeneca vaccine, as well as members across the country. It's so important. (Time expired)