Emma McBride (Dobell, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Mental Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

[by video link] My question is to the Prime Minister. Carly is a teacher who lives on the Central Coast but teaches year 12 in Western Sydney. Carly has just had her vaccine booking cancelled so that it can be redirected to year 12 students in Greater Sydney, like the ones she teaches. Isn't it true that, if the government had secured an adequate supply of vaccines at the start of the pandemic, absurd situations like this wouldn't be happening?

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

No, that's not correct. The federal government provided an extra 200,000 Pfizer doses and 150,000 extra AstraZeneca doses. Indeed, the federal government did not support the initiative to redirect doses away from the Central Coast to Greater Sydney. Through the GP network and the pharmacy network, we continue to distribute those doses directly into the Central Coast. I would encourage those on the Central Coast to go to their GP, to go to their pharmacist who is doing that, because the doses are continuing to be supplied by the Commonwealth government to those who are distributing. I also note that the GPs and the pharmacists are the primary administers of these doses right across the country. The pharmacists are coming online. We had 450 last month, and this month there will be thousands more that will be coming onstream in the middle of August.

The Commonwealth government has maintained the supply of doses to GPs on the Central Coast. That is coming directly from Operation COVID Shield. The state government has made a decision to redirect doses from the state clinics and the state hubs on the Central Coast to put them in another part of the state. That is their decision; that is their process for making those calls; that is up to them. But the Commonwealth government has not taken one dose from the Central Coast to put into other parts of the country, because the national vaccination program must work everywhere.

Two hundred thousand additional Pfizer doses have been provided to New South Wales. There are a million and more doses of AstraZeneca available for New South Wales to access and put across the state, as they would seek to do. We've got AstraZeneca walk-in clinics that are already occurring in south-western Sydney. We have stood up in south-western Sydney. There's a new Chester Hill GP clinic that has doses, and that's great work. We are targeting pharmacists in those particular areas in south-western Sydney and ensuring they have doses. We are also supporting essential workers working in distribution systems. Food distribution hubs are also getting access to the doses so that we can ensure that those essential parts of our economy can continue to function.

This lockdown is incredibly tough for Sydneysiders; it's really tough, and the lockdown will come off once the lockdown works. We will continue to support New South Wales, as we already are, with COVID disaster payments already totalling more than a billion dollars in direct financial support to people across New South Wales to get them through this crisis, plus the fifty-fifty support through the business program, which is three-quarters of a billion dollars a week. (Time expired)