Senate debates

Thursday, 2 September 2021

Statements by Senators

COVID-19: Morrison Government

1:40 pm

Photo of David VanDavid Van (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | | Hansard source

This week we heard from the Labor Party—those opposite—that the Prime Minister only has two jobs, vaccine rollout and quarantine, and that he's failed at these. What a facile statement. Firstly, as early as November last year the Morrison government had already ordered 135 million doses of four different vaccines. While history showed they had some problems, no government has the benefit of hindsight. Now nearly two million doses are being administered a week. The rollout has been greatly enhanced by deals done with Poland and Singapore. I'll remind those opposite that it was at the request of states and territories that they manage quarantine.

To highlight some of the other jobs that the Prime Minister has done, just in these past weeks: he oversaw and worked with our coalition partners on getting people out of Afghanistan; additional support for thousands of childcare providers impacted by extended COVID lockdowns was announced; Australia's emissions are now down 20.8 per cent on 2005 levels, which puts us at roughly 74 per cent of the way towards our Paris target; extra assistance was provided for jobseekers across the country; reforms to the leadership structure of the elite SAS regiment were made; more medications were added to the PBS; super funds were held to account with the annual performance test; million-dollar grants to Australian defence exporters were announced; disaster assistance for northern New South Wales towns was announced and ministerial trade talks were held between Australia and India—and, I should add, during the COVID-affected June quarter the economy still grew by 0.7 per cent. You'd have to be completely delusional to believe that the Prime Minister only has only two jobs. If Labor really believe this ridiculous line then it just goes to show how unfit they are to govern and that they have never belonged on these benches.