Queensland’s Premier and Deputy Premier have slammed the Morrison Government over the transparency of the federal vaccine rollout and claims states have been stockpiling.
While the state government has been “releasing its vaccine numbers every day. We do not see that from the federal government,” Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said.
The Queensland leaders also said that claims the states were withholding vaccines were “outrageous” and an “orchestrated attack”.
Those claims were aired by National Party Deputy Leader David Littleproud on Channel 9’s Today Show.
Mr Littleproud said that the states have “done three fifths of bugger all” and that “if the federal government hasn’t done their job, we deserve an uppercut. But the states have been sitting on their hands, they’ve been too complacent.”
Queensland’s Deputy Premier Steven Miles hit back stating “It’s time that he should give himself an uppercut,”
“The states are doing what they can with what has been distributed to them,” Minister Miles said.
“We have not had certainty of supply to our hospitals through the vaccine rollout,”
“That has required the holding back of enough doses to ensure we can administer the second dose,”
“We have not had the commitment from the commonwealth that those second doses will be there,”
“What we’ve seen throughout this entire pandemic is every time the Morrison government wants to deflect from their failings, they launch an attack on the states and territories,”
“The Prime Minister committed that 3 million Australians would be vaccinated by the end of March, well today’s the 31st of March and he has fallen 2.4 million short of that target,”
“The agreement between the states and territories and the commonwealth, leaves responsibility for 70 percent of the vaccination task with the federal government.”
NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard also hit back stating “the federal government was asked and is responsible for five and a half million people and they’ve rolled out 50,000. I think the figures speak for themselves.”
Today’s COVID-19 case numbers in Queensland have been “encouraging” according to the state’s Chief Health Officer Dr Jeannette Young, with only three people returning positive results in the last 24 hours out of more than 33,000 tests.
Two of those cases are linked to existing community clusters and one was detected in hotel quarantine.
