Extract from ABC News
Australia's COVID vaccine rollout came under heavy scrutiny as Stan Grant took the reins as guest host of Q+A.
Key points:
- Calls were made for Australia to accept the Uluru Statement
- Labor MP Stephen Jones described the nation's vaccine rollout as a "stuff up"
- The staged rollout came under heavy scrutiny with questions about who is being prioritised
When asked who hadn't been vaccinated, a clear majority of the Wollongong audience raised their hands, but when Grant asked who had been, he observed "maybe half a dozen or a bit more" from the more than 200 people put their hands up.
Presently only 4.6 million doses have been given of the 40 million required to vaccinate the Australian population against COVID-19.
The government also came under heavy criticism for not vaccinating Australians with a disability or in aged care fast enough.
The criticism comes in the wake of two cases in residents being confirmed at Arcare's aged care facility in Melbourne's West.
Audience member Fiona Myers said there had been "no urgency or duty of care" from the government when it came to vaccinating people with disabilities.
Ms Myers said two of her children are living with disabilities so she asked: "Why have people with disabilities been an afterthought in the vaccination process, despite being prioritised in the rollout plan?"At our current pace of roughly 736,000 doses a week, we can expect to reach the 40 million doses needed to fully vaccinate Australia’s adult population in early May 2022.
Liberal MP Tim Wilson defended the government rollout and said is it being done in stages for a reason and that people with a disability are not necessarily the most at risk before Grant said it should be about priorities.
"It is a question of priorities and the people that get the priority first and have got the priority first are those at most at risk of very severe health conditions," Mr Wilson said.
"A lot of the younger people in the room, because of diminished or low-risk profile won't have been vaccinated.
"It's a staged rollout and people with a disability are a critical part of that conversation but there are other subsections of the population with a higher risk profile that are more urgent."
Ms Myers said people with a disability were supposed to be phase 1B as were carers but none of the ones she knew apart from her had been vaccinated.
Mr Wilson then said the slowed importation of vaccines to Australia had played a part but fellow panellist Diane Smith-Gander, the national chair of the Centre for Economic Development of Australia was not having it as a response.
"It's very hard for us to take an answer like that seriously, " Ms Smith-Gander said.
"I'm usually the measured lady with the grey hair but my mother in aged care received her vaccine on May 26 and fully two months before that my 30-something pilates instructor received her vaccine as a front-line health worker, and that circle doesn't square to me.
"I think we all have experiences like this which make us think that the best minds are not being put to the issue of getting this rollout back up the S-curve."
Labor MP Stephen Jones then laid blame firmly at the feet of the Morrison government.
"If it was just people with disabilities, you'd say this is a stuff up," Mr Jones said.
"But it's not just people with disabilities, it's aged care, it's people with disabilities, it's front-line health workers, it's front-line workers right across the economy.
Labor MP quotes Tony Abbott on Indigenous issues
Thursday was Mabo Day, which marks the anniversary of when the precedent of Terra Nullius was overturned in the High Court of Australia, and later on the show there were calls for Australia to accept the Uluru Statement for an Indigenous voice to Parliament.
Panellist Lisa Jackson Pulver, who is Indigenous, said the Uluru Statement absolutely needed to be listened to and implemented.
"From my world it's very much around can we just crack on with this," Sydney University's vice-chancellor for Indigenous Strategy and Services said.
"It's been 230-plus years … never ceded, never sold, no treaties, people are asking what do we need to do about Aboriginal people, Indigenous matters?
"A lot of people came together and has put an enormous amount of love and time and conversations and interrogated some very heavy questions and came up with this document.
"We had a royal commission, we've had black deaths in custody, national inquiries, we've had the national Aboriginal health strategy.
"We've had these things over generations, over decades, over centuries, and then people come together and come up with a beautiful roadmap. And it's absolutely superb. You want to know what we need to do? We need to do that without question."
It was then that she received support from Mr Jones who surprisingly invoked former Liberal prime minister Tony Abbot in his response as he called for the Uluru statement to be enacted.
"We've got to see this through the lens of human decency," he said.
"We've got to get this done."
Watch the full episode on iview or via the Q+A Facebook page.
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