Former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says that Australia’s disaster vaccine rollout is the “biggest failure of public administration” in his experience

Former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says that although Australia has gotten “a lot of things right,” the federal government must answer for Australia’s disastrous vaccine rollout.

Turnbull criticised the Morrison government, saying it hadn’t bought enough vaccines, particularly Pfizer and Moderna. If it had, “we’d be in much better shape today”. He says this is why Australia is ranked last place for vaccination rates in the OECD.

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He says that the Morrison government’s other big failure in tackling Covid-19 was not creating a more effective quarantine system. The hotel quarantine system has got “real weaknesses,” he said, one being its inability to contain the virus “spreading through aerosols”

“As Jane Holton recommended last year, we should have a number of quarantine centres which are cabin based,” he said, where people are staying in an enclosed cabin that “is not sharing air conditioning with the people in the room next door” and “not sharing corridors in enclosed spaces and so forth”.

“We wouldn’t be locked down in Sydney if we had a higher level of vaccination. That’s a fact.”

Turnbull says that the bungled vaccine rollout has caused the nation to lock down when many other countries are reopening. Many people in Australia are unable to be vaccinated because there are not enough doses to go around.

“This is where it really gets terribly serious,” he says. ” There are people today in Sydney who are not vaccinated, because the Commonwealth government did not buy the vaccines we needed”.

Australian vaccine disaster

“We’re talking about very momentous responsibilities here,” he said. “The first duty of government is to keep people safe”.

“Why wouldn’t you have just bought as many vaccines from as many suppliers as you could, and if you ended up with too many vaccines, you know, give them to other countries?”

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