CORONAVIRUS — VACCINATIONS
242. Ms L. METTAM to the Premier:
I have a supplementary question.
Given that the Premier's promise of gold-standard transparency is now
in tatters, will the Premier please table the advice that he said this decision
was based on?
Mr M.
McGOWAN replied:
I meet with the Department of Health
virtually every day. It provides us with advice. It has provided us with advice
that 30 to 49-year-olds should get
vaccinated. Clearly, the Liberal and National Parties do not think that those
people should be vaccinated. That is clearly the tone of the member's
question. Today, we have announced a change to the program to allow 50 to
59-year-olds to get the Pfizer vaccine, and we are putting in place the systems
to allow that to happen. But we did not know that the Australian Technical
Advisory Group on Immunisation, the body that makes
these decisions nationally, was going to change its advice. We did not know
that; no-one knew that. What we did know was that we had to get people
vaccinated. We took a decision to get people vaccinated. Tens of thousands,
probably hundreds of thousands, more Western Australians have been vaccinated
as a consequence. Now we will roll that out so that 50 to 59-year-olds can take
advantage of the Pfizer vaccine, unless they have already had the first dose of
AstraZeneca. The advice is that those people should get the second dose of
AstraZeneca. The Minister for Health and I are in that category and we will
both be getting the second dose of AstraZeneca. We will be following that
advice.
What I find happens is that the
state opposition—the Liberals and Nationals—catastrophise
everything. Everything is a catastrophe. I can tell them what was a catastrophe
for them. I have an idea of what was a catastrophe for them, and it really was a catastrophe! I will tell
members one thing: we are going to continue to vaccinate Western Australians.
We will ensure we roll it out as quickly as possible. We will continue to take
the case up with the commonwealth to get more vaccines into Australia, in
particular Pfizer, and we are going to roll it out as quickly as we can.
Visitors — Walliston
Primary School
The
SPEAKER: Just before I give the
member for Mirrabooka the call, I would like to acknowledge that we have another
group of leaders here in the Speaker's gallery today as guests of the
member for Kalamunda. It is the year 6 leadership
group from Walliston Primary School, principal Craig Mainard and past principal
Bernie O'Hara. Welcome to the Western Australian Parliament.