Wednesday, 9 February 2022

Department of Health

20th Report to Parliament on the State of Emergency

Dr CUMMING (Western Metropolitan) (17:49): I rise to speak on the 20th report to Parliament on the extension of the declaration of the state of emergency. I never thought that there would be 20 reports on the extension of the state of emergency, and I got to speak to most of them every sitting Wednesday. They did not have much substance, but it gave me the opportunity to at least speak about what the government’s road maps were.

In the month before this report was released last year we had further versions of road maps delivered. We had vaccine mandates, which were a dog’s breakfast. It was really hard for the community to keep up with the changes within the actual report. We still have these current issues. The constant changing of directions is really hard to actually keep up with. On 1 October the Premier issued a statement saying that on the advice of the public health team all workers in Melbourne and regional Victoria had to be double vaccinated by 26 November. It just feels so long ago. If you tried to keep up with the vaccination mandatory directions within that report, it was absolutely a dog’s breakfast at the time. You could not keep up. Different categories kept coming in and out, and here we are. If you remember, in September the Premier actually stated that vaccine passports were going to be here to stay. In the next year—2022—expect that these vaccine passports will actually be including booster shots, and you know what? The Premier has actually stuck to his word.

Mr Ondarchie interjected.

Dr CUMMING: Yes, I have got the Premier speaking in September about three jabs and that these vaccine passports were not going away. He was predicting the future. There was no health advice—he would just predict the future, and even at that particular time he was saying words to the effect that we were going to have these vaccine passports for, obviously, the tennis, but also for Albert Park for the grand prix.

So here we are, and it would seem that we have the Premier at this particular time conflicting with what the national government wishes to do, which is two vaccines to get into Australia, but now you are going to need three to get into Victoria, which is going to clog up the economy. We have rolling people wanting to get their boosters. We do not need to micromanage them. We can recommend for them to actually go and get their boosters, but we do not have to mandate them to do things. We need to remove the mandates now completely so that we have any chance of recovering. For the government to think—and they have come into this place this year to actually say—if it was not for their mandating we would not have got to 90 per cent vaccination rates is absurd, because on 15 October when this report was being directed there were 80 per cent plus vaccination rates. It had nothing to do with mandating, and it is pretty clear the more you micromanage the community the more difficult it is for businesses to thrive, and it will be even more of a headache now that we are talking about natural immunity and trying to figure that out. Be thankful that we have 90 per cent plus vaccinated. The small percentage that are not vaccinated are nothing to worry about and should be able to go back to work. It is pretty clear.

I would hope that under the current and the new committee that is being set up we can have some proper recommendations, that we can in Victoria move forward and remove all the mandates—especially the mandates for children wearing masks in school. It is absurd. Science does not agree with it anymore. We all know that cloth masks are decorations, as the government comes in here every day with messages on their cloth masks, or a different story. So I would hope that this government actually stops being cruel to our children and removes the masks immediately.