Kristina Keneally (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

Labor supports vaccine mandates where they are guided by public health advice. That is because we want to see as many people as possible vaccinated as soon as possible, to keep Australian businesses open and keep all Australians safe, including Australian workers. We do not want more lockdowns. What we need right now, what Australians are calling out for, is leadership from the national government, and especially from the Prime Minister, on this issue. Instead, what do we have? We have the bungled vaccine rollout—a Prime Minister who forgot to order vaccines, who lied when he said we were at the front of the queue. We were at the back of the queue. We had a disastrous, tragic third outbreak that saw hundreds of people die. That is what happens when people are not vaccinated. They get sick and they die. Lives and livelihoods are lost. Instead, what do we have? We have a Prime Minister who is dog whistling to extremists who drag around gallows in protests, calling for state premiers to be hanged. This is un-Australian, yet the Australian Prime Minister cannot call it out, cannot unequivocally condemn it.

The fact of the matter is: we are debating this bill this morning because the government have given up their time to One Nation. They have jettisoned Senator McMahon's bill. They have jettisoned Senator McKenzie's bill. Instead, we are debating Senator Hanson's bill, and the government has made that deliberate decision because the Prime Minister is pandering to these extremist elements. Let's understand why he is pandering. Let us understand this. As Senator Pauline Hanson said:

In the Senate, I hold two of the three votes the government needs to pass their legislation …

So I have the deciding factor what happens, in the Senate.

I will not be supporting or voting for any government legislation, from here on in, until we get my private members bill up.

That is what we are doing here today. The Prime Minister has made sure we don't get to talk about Senator McMahon's bill and we don't get to talk about Senator McKenzie's bill. We get to talk about Senator Hanson's bill because he is giving a wink and a nod and a dog whistle to extremist elements. The same Prime Minister who can't call out and unequivocally condemn threats of violence and assassination against elected leaders in this country is here today allowing these same extremist elements to run the same arguments.

It's another example of this Prime Minister seeking to divide Australians rather than unite them, seeing to undermine the tremendous progress we have made as a country. We are all in this together. People have come together. People have worked hard to ensure that they can get access to the vaccine, that people understand the benefits of the vaccine and, yes, where it's guided by health advice, that we have mandates for a vaccine, to keep all of us safe. We are yet to reach 80 per cent double-dose rates for eligible people in Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory. In many vulnerable communities, vaccine coverage is much lower than that. Prime Minister, now is not the time to be sending mixed messages on the importance of getting vaccinated. So I say to the chamber today that Labor condemns—without reservation, without qualification—the violent threats being made by antivaccination protesters, even if the Prime Minister won't do it.

We live in a society, in a community, and that means we have obligations to one another. We have obligations to one another to tame this virus, to look out for one another and to keep each other safe. The Prime Minister is trying to divide us. He is trying to diminish that collective effort and undermine all of that good and all of that progress that Australians have made together, and he's doing it with dangerous dog whistling—with the doublespeak that we hear from him. He is claiming credit for the high vaccination rates without taking responsibility for the measures that got us here.

What makes this especially troubling is that, for mainstream Australians, for ordinary Australians, we see the kind of violent politics that played out in the United States over the last couple of years and exploded in the January Capitol Hill riots and we reject it. Mainstream Australians reject it, but the Prime Minister seems to want to give it a wink and a nod to curry favour with people with those types of violent views and violent threats.

We know that there are government members and senators who prefer this division and who are spreading vaccine misinformation. Senator Rennick has been a relentless person in this space with his efforts to undermine the nation's vaccine rollout with antivax content. For months, Senator Rennick has been pursuing an agenda to undermine the vaccine rollout. Senator Rennick is the one running scare campaigns on social media pages. As reported in the New Daily this morning, Senator Rennick has set up a taxpayer funded website to publish unverified reports of alleged vaccine adverse events and has claimed there is a government cover-up of the side effects. Senator Rennick tries to pretend that he's not actually a member of the government! The opposition condemns Senator Rennick's actions, as does the Australian Medical Association vice president, Dr Chris Moy, who has called Senator Rennick's posts 'about as antiscientific as you can get'.

Just this morning, Senator Canavan tweeted against workplace vaccination mandates, a position in direct opposition to his own government's mandate for aged-care workers. Then there is Senator Antic, who's undermining the vaccine rollout and feeding these dangerous protests by saying: 'Australians are being coerced into taking COVID vaccinations.' Australians are not being discriminated against and coerced. It is their choice whether or not to be vaccinated.

Of course, we cannot forget the member for Dawson, who has undermined health advice throughout this pandemic by promoting ivermectin as a COVID-19 treatment, which the TGA has banned for COVID treatment, because:

… there are a number of significant public health risks associated with taking ivermectin in an attempt to prevent COVID-19 infection rather than getting vaccinated.

The member for Dawson has also compared vaccine mandates to apartheid. Once again, we will remind the member for Dawson that the Morrison government, of which he is a member, has a vaccine mandate in place for aged-care workers.

By the way, it's not just the vaccine mandate for aged-care workers. Let's revisit some of the views of the Prime Minister from 2015. In 2015, this Prime Minister, Mr Morrison, when he was Minister for Social Services, brought in the No Jab, No Play policy:

Parents who vaccinate their children should have confidence that they can take their children to child care without the fear that their children will be at risk of contracting a serious or potentially life-threatening illness because of the conscientious objections of others.

That was the Prime Minister in 2015. His government policy is that children should be immunised. In August this year, Mr Morrison, the same Prime Minister who brought in No Jab, No Play, said that he expected the COVID-19 vaccine to be 'as mandatory as you can possibly make it'. Mr Morrison then went on to say:

There are always exemptions for any vaccine on medical grounds, but that should be the only basis.

Then this year he went on to say:

I was the minister that established 'no jab, no play'. So my view on this is pretty clear and not for turning.

Here's the thing: you've got a slippery prime minister who lies as effortlessly as he puts on his socks in the morning. Was he lying in 2015, or is he lying now? Was he lying earlier this year when he said he supported vaccine mandates or is he lying now? Is he so willing to pander to violent extremists and to threats of assassination against elected officials, premiers and members of parliament? Is he so willing to incite division, hatred and fear? Is that the path to victory that he wants? Is that the game he is playing? We are here today because he is pandering to One Nation. He is unwilling to say the things he said in 2015 and earlier this year. This is a prime minister who will say or do anything. This is a prime minister who cannot be trusted, and on this issue we are talking about the safety, the security, the lives and the livelihoods of our fellow Australians.

The nation is crying out for national leadership. If the Prime Minister of the day, Mr Morrison, is unwilling to show that leadership, is unwilling to unequivocally condemn the threats of violence and is unwilling to reject ideologically motivated violent extremism, then not only do we have an opportunity to take him out of office at the next election; indeed, Australia, we have an obligation to do so.