Health minister Mark Butler says a performance audit by the Auditor-General has "laid bare the multitude of failures of the former Government’s vaccine rollout."
"The report found there was a lack of targets and, when there were targets, the rollout completely missed their deadlines, especially for priority populations," he said, adding the former government did not meet any of the five key public targets it set for the rollout to priority groups.
"The lack of planning was highlighted in the failures the in-reach services to the aged care and disability sectors, where the complexity of administering was found to have been underestimated and insufficient providers were engaged initially," said the minister in a statement.
"The former Minister for Health said aged care residents would be vaccinated by early April 2021. It wasn’t until June 2021 that second dose vaccine clinics for aged care residents were completed.
"The vaccination rate of another priority population, NDIS residential disability residents, did not reach 80 per cent double vaccinated until 9 November 2021."
“It’s clear the former Prime Minister was more interested in getting jobs for himself than getting jabs in arms," said Mr Butler.
“For much of 2021, Australia had one of the slowest vaccine rollouts in the developed world.
“Australians languished in lockdown, workers couldn’t go to work and students couldn’t go to school because the former Government failed to do its job and rollout the vaccine.”