Hollie Hughes (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I have been listening this afternoon and I heard 'bandaid solution' and 'bring back JobKeeper' thrown around. Those opposite—those sitting at home on the screens and those sitting to my right—just don't get it. This is a pandemic no-one has ever seen before—it's a one-in-a hundred-year event. The Morrison government has continued to focus on lives and livelihoods. This means we don't set and forget how we roll out financial assistance to businesses and individuals. The pandemic has changed and we've seen situations evolve.

I want to spend a little bit of time talking about the persistent call for JobKeeper to be returned. We heard from those opposite when JobKeeper ended that the world was going to end and that we were going to fall off an economic cliff. That just didn't happen. In fact, we saw more Australians in work than pre the pandemic. You would think that by now they might have figured out that they got it wrong about JobKeeper then, but they have got it wrong again now.

I want to draw attention to Mr Paul Waterson's comments. He discussed the assistance that has been given to his business, Australian Venue Co. or AVC. They own a number of hospitality venues, particularly pubs, across Australia. He said that what the Morrison government is proposing now to assist workers—which has direct payments to workers from the Commonwealth, as opposed to the JobKeeper program, which was administered by the business—is all the best parts of JobKeeper with improvements. The improvements include those workers on visas who previously didn't qualify now being able to access some assistance.

This isn't a national lockdown; it isn't happening the same in every state across the country. I'm a senator from New South Wales and I know how tough it is for everybody at home in Greater Sydney at the moment. AVC wouldn't have been able to access JobKeeper because, whilst some of their venues are shut at the moment in Sydney, South Australia and Queensland, they not shut in the other states and, therefore, the group's revenue would not be seen to decline enough to allow them access to the previous JobKeeper payment. By modifying things, being a bit adaptable, looking at how we can change and make things better, learning, moving forward and continuing to develop, we've a system that will provide assistance to individuals who are impacted, not businesses that are national groups.

Whilst 2,000 of AVC's 5,400 workers have been stood down, they're maintaining significant contact with them. One of the claims is that JobKeeper was allowing bosses to stay connected to their employees. What a lot of businesses have discovered, particularly in the post-lockdown economic bounce that we seem to see happen quite regularly, is that they were struggling to find workers. So businesses are doing everything that they can to remain connected to their staff. If you look at a company like AVC, which is in one of the most impacted areas—hospitality and pubs had no vertical imbibing, square-limit limitations and all of those things that were having impacts across this industry—what they're doing is looking at training for their staff. They're remaining connected to them and keeping training programs going. They know this will end, things will change and things will open back up again, and they want to make sure that they still have access to those staff and that they're still connected to them. Perhaps they've even taken the opportunity to grow their staff, develop their skills and look at ways that will best serve them to open up as quickly as possible when they can. They're keeping that connection with their staff.

Admittedly, this is with a larger organisation, but businesses have offered staff an incentive. Pubs and hospitality can have quite a transient workforce. It tends to be quite a young workforce. Some businesses are topping up their pay to 80 per cent of what it would normally be. So staff are currently not earning as much money as they normally do, but if they're still with the company at the end of January—when, hopefully, we'll all be back open again and can enjoy, particularly, the fabulous Sydney summer—once these venues reopen and staff go back to work, they don't have to pay the money back. Businesses are continuing to invest in their staff as best they can, connecting with their staff and making sure that those employee-employer connections are remaining strong.

As I said at the beginning, this is about focusing on lives and livelihoods. People, particularly on the opposite side, are calling out about the vaccine and the vaccine rollout, but it's the vaccine hesitancy that half of you lot have been responsible for that is causing the problems. You consistently cling to this. You've got chief health officers in states—I know our friend is up there in Queensland, that abomination! The comments that she makes are just out of control. No wonder vaccine hesitancy in Queensland is the highest across the country. What an embarrassment! The fact that the Premier wants to promote this woman—maybe we should get her up there as soon as possible so she can stop giving health advice, because I can tell you that's not her strong suit. This is where we're seeing the vaccine hesitancy come in. People are vaccine shopping. The best vaccine you can get is the one that's available—go and get it. Get your arm out and get that jab. There are plenty of options to do it.

Senator Pratt interjecting—

Senator Pratt, if you're struggling to find a vaccine, I've put together a COVID page on my website that has both state and federal booking systems. It's got some actual information, not Dr York's interpretation but actual information from real scientists who have got some experience in haematology and who understand how viruses and vaccines work. We've put the information together for them so people can go to my website—have a look, Senator Pratt, it's holliehughes.com.au—and we've got all the booking systems there. The booking systems include the GP rollout.

I know this must be such a blow to you, because you consistently need to talk things down—I can't imagine how much the Olympics are disappointing you, at the moment, because we're just going so well. The fact that you'd have to cheer Australia on at any point might kill you!

But if you go to my website you can have a look at all the booking systems. I can show you. I'm happy to walk you through it. A couple of them there actually cover WA. You can go on there and have a look and see where the GPs are. Jimmy Rees could give Premier McGowan's press conferences—'Shut the borders!' That's all we ever get from Premier McGowan. The fact that his national cabinet walks out and agrees with the Prime Minister, and then says, 'We're going to do it on our own terms,' is a disgrace. It's an absolute disgrace. This sort of contribution to the conversation, if it doesn't stop—this is a national conversation, and these premiers need to start putting them and their CHOs back in their boxes. Stop spreading vaccine hesitation and start encouraging people to get it. Go and make it easier for to go and get into that.

Senator Pratt interjecting—

Lockdown—you guys will lock down when someone sneezes. It's just insanity. It's embarrassing, having lived in WA for a while. Guys, just secede already, if that's what you think.

This vaccine hesitation, picking a vaccine: I still want to know if anyone who had their flu shot this year can tell me what the brand it was. Anyone know? I went to PNG a couple of years ago. I couldn't tell you what brand any of those vaccines were, you know, but got a flu vax, got a Pfizer, got an AstraZeneca depending on what you want. But it's all there and available. You guys just can't stand it. You cannot bear that we've now hit 12 million doses. You can't stand that yesterday was a record day of doses, of over 200,000. You guys should be ashamed of yourselves. Get on team Australia. Get out there and encourage constituents. Go and encourage people to have their vaccine shots. I'll send you a link, Senator Pratt. You can check out the vaccination booking systems. Do you know the great thing about them—what we've seen when we've recommended people to them—is they've actually been able to get a vaccine within two days, sometimes faster.

But I digress. We were talking not only about vaccine hesitation but how good it is now for people to be able to go and access these vaccines when they're not shopping around and listening to Dr York, of all people. Just have Nick Coatsworth on. At least he knows what he's talking about. The guy's got some sort of comprehension of what's going to be involved in this process, but, you know, here we are.

This government is focused on actually providing benefits and financial assistance to individuals. So when we want to talk about the times, I just said you can get a vaccination within a couple of days. One of the things that we've learnt since we introduced this new scheme for people to get assistance is that sometimes the money is in their banks within 40 minutes. By cutting out that visit that they were going through. It's going straight into their bank account in 40 minutes. Can you imagine this lot on the other side? They wouldn't have a system up that you could have it in the bank by 40 minutes. Can I just pop in, because I do think it's gold, the 300 buck cash incentive this week. That's like cash for clunkers, off we go again. Let's get the pink batts and the school halls happening—shall we?—the cash splash, the cheques to dead people. Here we go again in the way they want to address this.

Senator Chisholm interjecting—

It's hilarious. We hear from those opposite: 'Bring back JobKeeper. We need JobKeeper. Bring it back.' Then we get Senator Chisolm, particularly, and a couple of the others who like to get up and have a bit of a whinge. They're upset because Harvey Norman accessed JobKeeper. Guess what. The Australia Club accessed JobKeeper, heaven forbid. They need to pay it back. Don't worry about the 300 bucks. Let's give it to Gina Rinehart. I'm pretty sure Katie Page—they'd all love their 300 bucks. So let's just splash that cash around for absolutely no—no targeting, just chuck it out there and see how we go.

But no. These guys: no consistency, no real comprehension of how things work, of how people actually want real support delivered to them in a timely fashion. I reckon in anyone's book, 40 minutes from being on Centrelink into your bank account is a pretty good effort. But you won't hear a word over there: talk it all down, negative, negative, negative. Let's talk about the graphs, the fact that we're at the bottom—the bottom of the death tally, my friends. The bottom of the death tally, but we won't ever say that. Don't worry about it. We won't acknowledge the lower end, you know—bottom of the death tally

Opposition senators interjecting—

But, you know, here we are again. I mean these guys obviously didn't pay much attention in maths class, because they don't understand how to read these graphs or what's happening in them or what they actually mean. They just want to chuck the cash out wherever they can, to whoever doesn't need it for whatever they can think of. But one of the best vaccine-hesitancy people—I love this, it's because the opposition leader in his bid to make a point of difference from the member for Maribyrnong, who's out there cheering the AstraZeneca on—I love Mr Shorten's photos of him getting his AstraZeneca out there. At every media opportunity he's banging that leadership drum. All those ambitions are coming back through. But there he is, supporting AstraZeneca, supporting Australians, wanting them to get the jab. What does Mr Albanese do? What does the Opposition Leader do? He races out as soon as possible to find an antivaxx campaigner; some woman who—by the way, her tweet today was just gold. If anyone hasn't seen it, go have a look; it's a cracker. He is out of time. He is out of ideas. I don't think she was supposed to be a newly endorsed Labor candidate— (Time expired)

Debate interrupted.