Yesterday in this very room, I said one of the lessons from overseas is that we need to reduce the time between the 2nd dose and the booster. There are two reasons for that. Firstly, we are way behind with the rollout of the booster. As of the 22 December, Australia was 20th out of 21 advanced economies, with regard to the rollout of booster shots. Only Japan, that has just started to commence rolling out the booster, was behind us in the developed world. Secondly, as we know from the signs and medical evidence, that all the reports from overseas as well as from here is that boosters will be very important, particularly for the Omicron variant of this pandemic.
I said that yesterday as a constructive suggestion. The government’s response, even though state governments, including South Australia and New South Wales … have all called for the same thing. Greg Hunt’s response was quite extraordinary yesterday afternoon. He said that this was utterly irresponsible, utterly inappropriate … well, less than 25 hours later, he is not only calling for it, he is announcing it.
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