Anne Webster (Mallee, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Deputy Prime Minister. Will the Deputy Prime Minister update the House on how rural and regional communities are playing a significant role in the Morrison-Joyce government's national plan to achieve a safe pathway out of the COVID-19 pandemic?

Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for her question. I note the work that she has been doing with her community, especially with pharmacies, which have become so vital in making sure we have a safe plan to take the Australian people back to their liberties, back to their freedoms, away from the frustrations they are now dealing with—which we understand and empathise with and want to make sure that we can move quickly on, but as safely as we possibly can. We know that this job in pharmacies, with Pisasale's Robinvale pharmacy, Mildura's Chemist Warehouse, Kaniva Pharmacy and Guardian Pharmacy Maryborough—all these pharmacies in the member for Mallee's electorate have been vital have been a vital componentry of being able to bring forward vaccination to people in the remote areas and the regional areas of our nation. I'd also like commend the work done by the member for Cowper, who has been instrumental in driving forward this agenda, and also note the work done by a local pharmacist in his area, Judy Plunkett. Judy was absolutely instrumental in coming forward with a plan for us, so that we could add to our plan for the nation.

We have in regional areas 4.6 million doses that have now been administered: the first dose to nearly 3 million and a second dose to 1.7 million. Even in my own area in the hills behind Tamworth and Danglemah, people are saying, 'I'm going down to get vaccinated.' They're booking into the pharmacy and they're going in, getting vaccinated and coming home. The question I ask them is, 'Well, how hard was that?' And I've heard: 'It's not hard at all. You just turn up, they vaccinate you, and off you go home.' AstraZeneca, I have to admit, was the vaccine they use.

We have trials ahead of us and we have difficulties ahead of us, and I was talking to the member for Nicholls, just prior to being here, about the work he's doing in Shepparton to keep his community safe and to get them back to work, and also to the member for Parkes, who has been absolutely at the forefront of looking after the people of Brewarrina and Walgett and Dubbo, making sure that he does the right thing to keep them safe and take them, with our plan, to an area where they are safer where they are back to work.

There is also the Royal Flying Doctor Service going to Eromanga, Jundah, Sweers Island, Kununurra, Warlpiri country, Peppimenarti—making sure that we go to the edges of our nation, this vast continent. And in this vast continent we are going to every corner to look after the Australian people, to get them to the other side of this pandemic—to give them back their liberties and give them back their freedoms, deal with their frustrations, and hand them back the Australia that they were born to.