Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

At midnight on Thursday, Melburnians will begin to emerge from our sixth lockdown, and all of Victoria, including us who live in the electorate of McEwan, will begin to navigate a new stage in this pandemic journey. I want to take this opportunity to recognise and applaud the immense courage, strength and resilience of our community and all Victorians. Faced with unprecedented hardships over the course of this pandemic, I've watched my community again and again come together and confront the challenges. The stories of camaraderie and everyday kindness that I've heard from those in our electorate have confirmed once again the enduring spirit and strength in Australians.

However, let us be clear. Many of these challenges that our communities have faced throughout the course of this pandemic, particularly over the last 12 months, have been avoidable. They were a result of an unprepared and irresponsible Morrison government. When the Treasurer gave a press conference criticising the time that Victoria was taking to emerge from lockdowns, like so many other Victorians I was outraged. This COVID outbreak which originated in Sydney and the subsequent outbreak and lockdown in Victoria were a result of two things: the Morrison government's failure on quarantine and the Morrison government's failure on vaccines. Time and time again, throughout the course of this pandemic, the Morrison government has continued to fail Australians. In Victoria, we have felt the impacts of that failure more so than anywhere else. The Morrison government claimed that we were at the front of the queue for vaccines, but we know that wasn't true. In fact, we were at the rear of the queue. They wasted so much time rejecting proposals for federal quarantine facilities, only to agree to the need for such facilities once they became obsolete. They have acted too slowly in securing and rolling out rapid antigen testing, which has been used in the US and the UK for months now, to get Australians back to work and school as quickly as possible so that life can return to normal. At every stage of this pandemic, the Morrison government has failed Australians and failed our communities in McEwen. If the government hadn't dragged its feet on vaccines and federal quarantine, Australia would have hit its vaccination targets a year earlier, and Melbourne would not have suffered so many lockdowns.

For the government to come out now and criticise Victoria's handling of the pandemic, and for the Treasurer, who spent most of last year's lockdowns here in Canberra—he deserted his community and came up here for his safety; to go out for dinner and have fun while we were all locked down—to attack Victorians and support the premature ending of COVID disaster payments is an absolute disgrace. Victorians in our community of McEwen have navigated this pandemic with strength, resilience, kindness and the courage of Australian spirit. The Morrison government has failed them. It continues to fail them, and that has never been clearer.