E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC RADIO NATIONAL
THURSDAY, 7 OCTOBER 2021

SUBJECTS: Delays in vaccine rollout for people with disabilities; states re-opening from COVID lockdown
 
DAVID SPEERS, HOST: The Victorian Government says it has stepped in to ensure more people living with a disability take up COVID vaccination in the state.
 
STATE MINISTER LUKE DONNELLAN: 10 dedicated disability vaccine pop up centres will be launched through the month of October. This is very much about us stepping in. We're not happy with the vaccine rates at the moment. We're opening up. We need to deal with this now.
 
SPEERS: That's the State Disability Minister in Victoria, Luke Donnellan. The announcement comes as last week's figures show more than 71 per cent of Victorians over 16 on the NDIS have received their first jab. That's slightly higher than the national average of 67 per cent. Federal NDIS Minister Linda Reynolds told Sky News today that national first dose figure is yet to reach 70 per cent.
 
MINISTER LINDA REYNOLDS: Since June, we've now quadrupled the number of people on the NDIS, and we've now got 75 per cent of disability workers. So, we're now at nearly 70 per cent of all NDIS participants and over 75 per cent first vaccination for those in residential care.
 
SPEERS: Bill Shorten is the Shadow Minister for the NDIS. Welcome to our RN Drive.
 
BILL SHORTEN, MEMBER IR MARIBYRNONG: Good evening, David.
 
SPEERS: Well, as we just heard there from the Minister, nearly 70 per cent of NDIS recipients have now had one jab, nearly 75 per cent for those in residential care. You may know this, the percentage of the fully vaccinated is a little unclear, but what do you make of these figures?
 
SHORTEN: I think the Morrison Government, through its negligent rollout of vaccinations, is now playing life and death with profoundly and severely impaired Australians. They promised in January of this year that vulnerable Australians, people in aged care facilities and people with disability were in what they called Category 1A. But now we're in October, and the Federal Ministers have been required to reveal that people with disability are not only not at the front of the queue, they're not even at the middle of the queue. So, I think this is a deplorable state of affairs, to the extent that the State Government in Victoria is having to do a blitz because it has to do the job that the Federal Government promised Australians it would do in January.
 
SPEERS: The Minister, Linda Reynolds, did admit today that the Government underestimated the challenges involved here. They were her words. She cites vaccine hesitancy as a problem and concern amongst people with a disability about the health impacts. She said these were the main reasons there's been a slower than anticipated rollout. What do you think here? I mean, she also points out there's been a big increase since June in the rollout, things have improved. Have those earlier problems been fixed?
 
SHORTEN: No, not yet. First of all, by saying there's vaccine hesitancy, she's is blaming people with disability for not getting vaccinated. I don't buy that for one second. The Government knew that people with disability, profoundly and severely impaired people, our fellow Australians, were going to need special attention in January. Labor has been calling for them to step up their efforts. Disability rights organisations, people who provide services, the National Disability Service providers have been saying we need more help. And then the Government sort of wanders along in its own sort of dream state, and then today says, “Well, we're gradually getting there”. The problem is that states are now coming out of lockdown. New South Wales next week, Victoria in a matter of weeks. But people with disability are still going to be stranded in their own homes. All of the experts say that once we come out of lockdown, COVID-19 becomes a pandemic of the unvaccinated. But through this Government's negligence, and you can't call it anything but negligence, this is their day job. They're paid to look after vulnerable Australians. The people in the unvaccinated disproportionately are people with disabilities who haven't had the opportunity to get vaccinated.
 
SPEERS: Well, this is this question, the Royal Commission draft report last week seemed to suggest perhaps those lockdowns shouldn't end until those most vulnerable cohorts reach those vaccination targets. Do you agree?
 
SHORTEN: Well, I think there's probably a third way between the Government of Just Let It Rip and the Disability Royal Commission saying, let’s lock down everyone. It’s that the Government needs to blitz vaccinate people in October. See, this Government makes easy things look hard and hard things look impossible. The truth of the matter is that the Government pays a package of support through the NDIS to the most profoundly impaired and severely disabled Australians, so they know where they live because they pay them packages of support. I think it’s nothing more complicated than old fashioned shoe leather.
 
SPEERS: So, get around to every residence.
 
SHORTEN: Send mobile teams out and visit them and talk to them. And I don't understand why, if that sounds hard in October, it would have been a lot easier in January. See, my fear is that the train has left the station about people wanting to move beyond Lockdown Australia. But my fear is that for people with disability, they're just the ones who can't leave their homes because they can't - you know, unlike those idiot protesters in Melbourne who turn that protest into a super-spreader event boasting about their dislike of vaccination, people with disability are the exact opposite. They can't leave their homes for fear of catching COVID, and that's why vaccines are so important. I do not understand for the life of me why the Federal Government, from January, could not have had people out visiting people with disabilities, seeing if they've got the jab and explaining things to them. It's almost like, listening to Linda Reynolds there's almost a sense that this is like her first day at school and everything is quite amazing and new - oh, we have people with disability. Oh, it takes time to explain things to people who have intellectual disabilities or communication issues. Well, we knew that last week and we know that next week, and I don't buy the argument from the Federal Government that, oh, people disability are hard to deal with. No, they're not, they’re are known commodity and we should have deployed all these resources, which are belatedly being thrown into the field, months ago and are still not adequately rolled out.
 
SPEERS: More broadly, you mentioned the train's left the station on people wanting to move beyond lockdown. The new New South Wales Premier’s today announced changes to the reopening roadmap, which from Monday lockdown will end. As a Victorian, what do you think of this plan, this approach? Is it one you'd like to see the Victorian Government emulate?
 
SHORTEN: To be fair, I haven't seen what the new Premier of New South Wales has said, but to the extent you're saying is the difference between the Victorian timetable and the New South Wales timetable - listen, I don't want us to spend a second or a minute longer and lockdown than we have to in Melbourne, you know, my communities have been locked down for 250 days plus across the last year, kids have missed a year and a half of schooling. You know, there's been the funerals, the weddings, the marriages delayed, the funerals people can't go to.
 
SPEERS: Well, as you know, Victoria has endured more days in lockdown than anywhere in the world, as has been well expressed.
 
SHORTEN: Yes.
 
SPEERS: And yet, you know, this week we've seen some of the highest daily case numbers in Australia so far. What do you put that down to?
 
SHORTEN: I think the antics of the anti-vaccine demonstrators last week must be responsible for a fair bit of this. You know, I hear on the grapevine that when people have come in and said, where did they get COVID from, they won't tell the contact tracers where their movements are, because they were at the protests and they don’t want to own up to it. So, I think those protests were super-spreader events.
 
SPEERS: There's a fair chunk of the city not following the rules, though, right? Around Grand Final parties and so on.
 
SHORTEN: Yeah, listen, that's been a blame too. Listen, I think Melburnians have amazed everyone. What we've actually put up with and got through means I think Melburnians should probably get a medal, not a telling off. But having said that, I think the end is in sight. My concern is that the Morrison Government has a knack of disappearing just right when the chores have to be done. You know, the old everyone has dinner, then you always find the job jumper who nicks off when the dishes have to be washed. That is Scotty, that's Mr Morrison down to a tee. Our hospital systems are going to be strained. The Federal Government, just like when businesses were doing it hard with jobs had JobKeeper, the Federal Government needs to come to the party to help our hospitals deal with an event which they haven’t been funded to deal with.
 
SPEERS: So, more funding from the Commonwealth?
 
SHORTEN: I don't see how you avoid that. I mean, fair enough, you've got to help the businesses who are affected, because they're dealing with unprecedented times. But our hospital system, our nurses, our doctors, they're seeing people continuously. I was speaking to an emergency doctor last night. They are exhausted, so we do need more resources. And once we come out of lockdown -
 
SPEERS: You don’t think some of the states should have been doing more over the last 18 months to get their hospitals ready? I mean, states don't have COVID are apparently struggling with their hospitals.
 
SHORTEN: I think the hospital system, generally in Australia, has been systemically underfunded for a long period of time.
 
SPEERS: By the states and the Commonwealth?
 
SHORTEN: By the whole system of governance, where the Federal Government collects the majority of taxes in Australia, but the states have to spend the majority of taxes for our schools and our hospitals. But that's systemic, you know, that imbalance between who level of government receives the taxes and which level of government has to spend them. That has now been exacerbated, if you like the cracks in our funding structure, and I spoke about that before the last election, so I have said this for years, has now been exposed, and there's no doubt that our hospitals for the last 18 months have been stepping up. When Mr Morrison says, Well, what have they been doing to get ready, go and talk to emergency ward nurses, go down and talk to the cleaners who look after the ICU facilities. They've been working flat out for 18 months. And if we're going to open up, which is what I want us to do, what I say is that we have to get ready for opening up. And yes, vaccinations will mean that most of us don't get sick, or if we do get sick it won't be very bad. But there's still a proportion of are unvaccinated. There's still a proportion of vulnerable communities who, because of the Government's negligent rollout, through no fault of their own. are unvaccinated. When they get sick, the numbers may well surge in our hospitals, and it's not good enough for the Government to look the other way, whistle a tune, kick a rock with their collective boot and say It's not my problem.
 
SPEERS: Okay, Bill Shorten, we do have to leave it there. Thanks so much for joining us.
 
SHORTEN: Lovely to chat to you. Thank you.
 
SPEERS: Bill Shorten is the Shadow Minister for the NDIS.
 
 
ENDS