Former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has strongly condemned Australia’s response to the COVID crisis when speaking on The Morning Show.
Responding to negative overseas commentary around ‘Fortress Australia’, Turnbull said the country has had “one of the slowest vaccine rollouts in the world, it’s the biggest failure in public administration that I can recall”.
“The federal government had one big job which was to get plenty of vaccines and get everyone vaccinated quickly and they failed, it’s an incredible failure,” he continued.
With New South Wales potentially remaining cut off from the rest of the country indefinitely, Larry Emdur asked Turnbull where the country may be headed.
“The first thing is … you’ve got to get everybody vaccinated. The fundamental problem is the federal government didn’t buy enough vaccines, that’s the bottom line.
“Hopefully by the end of the year they will have got enough vaccines, you’ve got to get everybody vaccinated”.
Addressing Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s upcoming trip to Tokyo to meet IOC officials as part of the state’s bid to host the 2032 Olympics, he said it was the right move to help get their proposal over the line.
“Politically it isn’t a great look for her to be doing it but if Brisbane really wants to get the Games, then they’ve got to … put up their best case.”