More than 25,000 Australians living in residential disability care, and those who care and provide crucial services for them, appear to have fallen off the government’s vaccine schedule.
After early consultation and plans to engage the sector were shown last week to have not been followed up by contact with the network of disability support providers, yesterday the Health Department confirmed the grim failure.
On February 15, Scott Morrison said the first priority phase of the rollout, category 1A — which includes disability residents and staff — would be completed within six weeks. On February 18, Health Minister Greg Hunt repeated that phase 1A would be completed in six weeks: “Everyone will be covered over the course of six weeks.”
Bear in mind this timetable was well after the government learnt that Europe was restricting exports of the AstraZeneca vaccine — which caused it to downgrade its second rollout schedule to a third one in which 1.8 million vaccinations would be delivered by the end of March. As of yesterday, 1.65 million vaccinations had been given, an average of about 52,000 a day over the past week.
Yesterday the Health Department admitted to the Senate COVID-19 inquiry that just 192 disability residents or staff had been fully vaccinated. Another 1448 had had their first shot, meaning the government had met 6.6% of its target three weeks after it was supposed to have been completed.
“It’s been a very minor part of our program to date,” one official told the committee, and then, remarkably, disputed that the government had ever given any commitment about a six week deadline.
“The original intention was to have that done by the end of March … to have 1A done in six weeks, wasn’t it?” chair Katy Gallagher asked.
“I don’t recall that as having been…” said the official, backed by health secretary Brendan Murphy, before Murphy eventually admitted that yes, the intention had been to complete vaccinations for disability residents within the same six week timeframe as aged care residents, but there had been too much “complexity”.
While the residential disability sector operates with a large number of facilities and smaller numbers of residents in each facility than aged care, this was well known in the planning stages of the rollout; residential care providers were pleased with the level of engagement and consultation from the Health Department.
That has turned into dismay.
The government, meanwhile, offered another announcement on the rollout, saying it had appointed Commodore Eric Young to a newly created position in its “vaccine operation centre”.
Is it just incompetence? Send your thoughts to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication in Crikey’s Your Say section.
It’s the clearest possible example of the government saying one thing and doing another.
There may be a good explanation for putting the aged ahead of the disabled. But there is no good reason for the government telling the disabled they had equal priority then secretly pushing them down the queue.
Just when you think this government has hit peak incompetence, they surprise, disappoint and disgust all over again. On a daily basis, it seems.
I appreciate the Murdoch media has long since lost any credibility as a purveyor of news based on facts, preferring to be a “megaphone for conspiracies and falsehoods” (as former US director of national intelligence James Clapper put it, as reported in the GA today) but if it just a quarter of their LNP propaganda/Labor smearing output was diverted to factual reporting of this government’s policy and service failures, it would be dead in the water. (Others among the MSM are almost as culpable.) My thanks again go to Crikey and also The New Daily, GA, Michael West etc for being true and honourable members of the fourth estate by holding government to account and keeping us properly informed.
Just on another point: The European ^hold up^ was not for millions, it was 250,000 stopped by Italy only. When quoting such things it’s preferable to quote facts, not what this incompetent rabble says when trying to cover all their fat arses.
It’s gross incompetence. If your first thought in coming up with solutions is which donor you can shower with tax dollars to provide an outcome instead of honestly engaging with the most suitable experts or even god forbid nurture expertise in an appropriately structured and funded public service, then you will rarely get to a satisfactory solution.
But since they hardly get ‘punished’ for their incompetence because media is running cover for them and the donors keep giving a fraction of tax payers dollars back into their campaign coffers, why should they care – they keep getting re-elected.
Yes it is just incompetence pure and simple – like everything this govt tries to do !!!