Australia news live: mass coronavirus vaccine hubs planned; PM does not apologise to former Australia Post CEO Christine Holgate
Scott Morrison stops short of apologising for speech in parliament; PM asks national cabinet to meet twice a week to help get Covid vaccine rollout on track. Follow updates live
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The opposition leader, Anthony Albanese, is also in Perth (he was there yesterday too) and is mocking the government’s new line: that it is returning to a “war footing” by reinstating bi-weekly national cabinet meetings to handle the vaccine rollout.
Albanese:
Today we have Scott Morrison saying he’s placing Australia on war footing. What’s his response? A couple of meetings a week. You know, under Scott Morrison we’ll meet them on the beaches, we’ll meet them on the phone hook-up.
The fact is that he is responsible and the federal government is responsible for the deals on vaccines, and the problem that you have is you can’t have a rollout of the vaccines if the vaccines aren’t available. The federal government hasn’t made the vaccines available. They have put all of their eggs in the AstraZeneca basket and then the chickens have come home to roost when that has failed.
A tidbit from that Scott Morrison press conference from earlier: the prime minister says he will meet with Brittany Higgins.
Morrison said a location for the private meeting was yet to be confirmed, but that he was “looking forward” to meeting with her.
I know there are a range of issues she’s relayed to my chief of staff that she would like to raise and I look forward to hearing her.
Read the original article at The Guardian