Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Senior Australians and Aged Care Services) Share this | Hansard source

[by video link] I thank Senator Siewert for the question. In fact, children are included in the vaccination program, as announced by the health minister on Monday. We commenced with children with certain health issues, Indigenous children and children in remote communities as a part of our vaccination program. The vaccination availability and approval for children was only made by the TGA in recent times, so the health minister in fact did announce on Monday that children will become part of the vaccination program in the categories that I've outlined.

Our objective is to offer all Australians for whom a vaccine has been approved the opportunity to have one as soon as possible. We want all of those over the age of 18 to have the opportunity for a vaccine by the end of the year. As I've said a number of times, and as the health minister and the Prime Minister and many of my colleagues have said, we will continue to grow and develop the vaccine program with the availability of vaccine opening up more opportunities for Australians to access the vaccine through more outlets. It's important that as many Australians as possible get vaccinated. We've seen with the delta variant how the COVID virus has modified and changed its behaviour, so it's important that we continue to adapt to the circumstances as the virus itself adapts and creates more variants. The government will continue to do that.