Anne Stanley (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Gandangara Health Services is a First Nations organisation in Liverpool, a COVID hotspot. Gandangara's CEO says they've only been allocated around 40 vaccine doses per day and 'We are being asked to fill a Grand Canyon sized need with a handful of pebbles.' Why did the Prime Minister say yesterday that challenges in the vaccine rollout had been overcome, when they simply have not?

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

Today—indeed, just before question time—an additional 500,000 doses have been added to the some 4½ million Pfizer doses that will be distributed over the course of September, the one million Moderna doses that will go out in September and the many millions more of AstraZeneca doses. I particularly want to thank all the GPs and the pharmacists around the country who are doing such a fantastic job, together with the state hubs, the nurses and others who are supporting those many, many points of presence, over 9,000 points of presence, right across the country, whether they be in Western Sydney, up in North Queensland, down in Tasmania, over in the west or wherever they may be. They are doing an extraordinary job, so much so that now, as we approach the end of August, 35 per cent of our population aged over 16 has had two doses, and 58.7 per cent have had their first dose. Very importantly, of those aged over 70, our most vulnerable, 87.4 per cent have had their first dose, and 62.9 per cent have had their second dose. More than 50 per cent of over 50s now had both doses of the vaccine.

What we've been able to do, particularly over the course of August, going into September, is bring forward those doses by getting access to those extra million Pfizer doses we were able to get out of Poland and now the extra 500,000 that are coming from the arrangement with Singapore—and I thank Prime Minister Lee and all of those involved in that initiative. That and the other irons we have in the fire mean there are more and more doses, and that means that we are fast approaching the time when everyone in this country will have had the opportunity to have that vaccine. We are fast approaching that time, and I want to thank everyone across the country for the sterling job they've been doing in rolling up their sleeves and getting those vaccines. We are operating at vaccination rates, on a weekly basis, in per capita terms, that exceed even the highest levels achieved in the United States and the United Kingdom.