Ms THEOPHANOUS (Northcote): Vaccinations are the way out of this pandemic. We all know that.
With over 3.38 million people rolling up their sleeves and getting their first dose already, Victorians are doing their bit.
As a state government, we have been propelling the commonwealth’s vaccination program through our state vaccination hubs.
And we’re supporting fantastic local initiatives like the pop-up vaccination clinic at the Greek Orthodox Church of St George in Thornbury recently.
This was a huge success and I want to express my thanks to the church, DPV Health, the Hellenic Medical Society of Australia and the Greek Orthodox community of Melbourne and Victoria for their work pulling it together.
But the reality is we could be doing more if the commonwealth hadn’t failed in their job to secure and distribute enough vaccinations for our country in a way that is timely and fair.
I’m contacted regularly by constituents who are ready and willing to get vaccinated; they want the opportunity to do the right thing to protect themselves, their families and their community.
So I can understand their anger when it was revealed that the Prime Minister broke his promise to deliver a fair and proportionate distribution of vaccines.
Hundreds and thousands of doses have now gone to NSW that should have gone elsewhere. Victoria has already missed out on 340 000 doses of Pfizer alone.
Everyone wants to see the people of NSW come out of their extended lockdown as soon as possible—no-one wants to see any Australian suffer.
But it is worth noting that a key tenet of the national plan to end lockdowns was that we all need to hit the vaccination targets, not just NSW.
If we are truly all in this together as a nation, we cannot have a national plan to vaccinate NSW.
The grim reality is that the commonwealth simply did not secure enough vaccines for the country. They have not done their job.
The kick in the guts is that as Victorians we did the hard yards last year, driving the virus down, protecting other states and buying our country time before a vaccine was available.
All the Prime Minister did was smirk and deride our efforts—and squander the window Victorians gave him to get the vaccine rollout done right.
My community want to get vaccinated. They are doing their bit.
The Victorian government are making it easier for people to get vaccinated with the supplies we have. We are doing our bit.
All we are asking is that the Morrison government do theirs.
