Morrison government silent on contact with Pfizer global chief after Kevin Rudd intervenes in vaccine talks
Pfizer #Pfizer
Scott Morrison and federal health minister Greg Hunt have not denied claims that they failed to press Australia’s case for more vaccine doses directly with Pfizer’s global chief, after revelations that Kevin Rudd spoke to the pharmaceutical company chief last month.
But Hunt said on Monday he talked at least weekly to the chief of Pfizer’s Australian operations, and denied that the intervention by former prime minister Rudd, whose name he refused to say, had had any effect on the pace of supply.
Morrison, during an interview with Sky News on Monday, also did not deny he had not contacted the global chief of Pfizer. “I’ve spoken to the head of Pfizer in Australia,” the prime minister replied.
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Morrison said he had also spoken with a senior board member of Pfizer when he was in Europe last month.
Hunt also hit back at reports that Australia had displayed a “rude, dismissive and penny-pinching approach” to its negotiations with Pfizer in the middle of last year as “a grassy knoll story”, saying it had been denied by both the company and the health department.
Labor seized on the reports of Rudd’s backchannel diplomacy to argue that the prime minister, Scott Morrison, had failed to be as proactive as other world leaders in securing vaccine doses as quickly as possible.
Amid growing political pressure over the Coalition’s handling of the vaccine rollout, the Morrison government last week promoted what it called the “ramp-up” of some of the scheduled Pfizer vaccine doses.
But the pharmaceutical company has made it clear there has been no change to its contractual arrangement to supply 40m doses to Australia this year.
Rudd’s call with Pfizer’s global chairman and chief executive, Albert Bourla, was first reported by the ABC’s Laura Tingle on Sunday evening.
The ABC reported that a senior Australian businessman was told by senior Pfizer executives in June they were astonished Morrison had not directly spoken to Bourla, as the former prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, had done several times.
In response to my representations, Dr Bourla said he would personally look at ‘what further might be able to be done’
Kevin Rudd, former PM
Rudd then arranged a call with Bourla on 30 June, in what the former prime minister told Morrison was “purely in my private capacity as an Australian citizen who cares for his country’s wellbeing”.
Guardian Australia has confirmed that Rudd wrote to Morrison the same day to brief the prime minister on the contents of the call.
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In the letter, Rudd said he had taken the “opportunity to ask Dr Bourla whether there was any possible way, given Pfizer’s current international contractual obligations, to advance the dispatch of significant quantities of the Pfizer vaccine to Australia as early as possible in the third quarter this year”.
“Dr Bourla indicated that they had limited flexibility because of their existing supply obligations around the world,” Rudd told Morrison in the letter.
“Nonetheless, he also indicated that a number of their manufacturing facilities were producing ahead of schedule. In response to my representations, Dr Bourla said he would personally look at ‘what further might be able to be done’. I thanked Dr Bourla for that.”
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A spokesperson for Rudd said on Monday his letter was “entirely consistent with public statements by Pfizer”, as he had made clear all negotiating powers rested with the federal government.
The spokesperson said Rudd had sought the call “at the urging of senior Australian business leaders, who were deeply concerned by the government’s failure to lobby Pfizer at its most senior levels as many other world leaders have over recent months”.
“Prior to speaking with Dr Bourla, Mr Rudd directly notified Mr Morrison and asked if there was anything he could say, or not say, that would benefit Australia’s efforts to accelerate the vaccine rollout,” Rudd’s spokesperson said.
“Mr Morrison provided some advice and later thanked Mr Rudd for his letter summarising the conversation.”
A spokesperson for Pfizer said on Monday that media reports “suggesting that any third party or individual has had any role in contractual agreements reached between Pfizer and the Australian government are inaccurate”.
“The only two parties involved in these agreements are Pfizer and the Australian government.”
Pfizer said the details of its supply arrangements were confidential.
“All discussions on supply and procurement with the federal government are led by Pfizer representatives in Australia,” the spokesperson said.
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At a media conference in Melbourne on Monday, Hunt brushed off questions about Rudd’s representations by reading out portions of the Pfizer statement multiple times.
The minister said the government had had “ongoing, continuous and multiple negotiations” with Pfizer’s Australian branch, led by Anne Harris, with conversations at least weekly.
When asked whether the government had spoken directly with Pfizer’s global chief since realising that it needed more than the 10m doses that had been contracted late last year, Hunt said: “We worked through the Australian office.
“We have dealt with one of the board members previously and the important thing is no earlier doses were available.”
Instead of using Rudd’s name, Hunt mentioned “the said person” or “the individual in question”.
“So I respect that individuals will sometimes take initiatives and we welcome and thank them, but did it make a difference? No,” Hunt said.
The opposition leader, Anthony Albanese, said it was “unfortunate that the federal government isn’t doing its job”, leaving it to “people like Kevin Rudd and people in the business community … to step up in order to advance the interests of the rollout of the vaccine”.
“We know that this government had two jobs this year – the rollout of the vaccine and national quarantine – and they botched both of them,” Albanese said.
Pfizer said it was committed to delivering 40m doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine to Australia over the course of 2021. It said it had met its contractual commitments to date and was “on track to deliver the remaining doses by the end of the year”.