Australia politics live: NSW minister tests positive to Covid and state parliament delayed

Scott Morrison is really, really hanging on to the “first dose” numbers when defending Australia’s vaccine rollout.

This was part of his exchange with a host on the Seven Network this morning:

Q: So, isn’t it 3% who have been fully vaccinated in Australia, though?

Morrison: The reason I’d caution you in using that number is that it suggests if you’ve had your first dose, that you have no protection, and that’s simply not true. And it would be wrong for people to think that the first dose doesn’t provide you protection, because the scientific evidence shows it clearly does.

Q: OK, so if we go with that, we’ve had 6 million Australians who have had some form of vaccination.

Morrison: 7 million.

Q: OK, 7 million.

Morrison: We’re getting to 7 million, pretty close.

Q: OK, so that’s great. They’ve got some form of protection. America have got, what, 140 million, they are opening up, they’re in nightclubs, we got the Foo Fighters performing in New York City. We have got states around Australia closing their borders and holidays ruined, and hundreds of millions of dollars of businesses in disarray today. What are we doing wrong, prime minister?

Morrison: I’d offer you this comparison. In the UK today, we have got people dying every single day. In the UK, 12,000 cases a day, we had 27 deaths yesterday. They have a vaccination rate of 81% on their first dose. Now, Australia has got not one person in ICU today because of Covid. If we’d had the same fatality rate of other countries around the world similar to ours more than 30,000 additional Australians would have died. Our economy is bigger today than it was before the pandemic hit, and we’ve got more people in work today before the pandemic hit. Now, that compares favourably to any other country around the world today. I’ve just got back from the G7, and the world is amazed at how Australia has been able to both keep, save lives and save livelihoods. In the United States and in the UK, it has been an absolute fatal calamity. That has not occurred in Australia. Yes, will get outbreaks from time to time Nat, and we will deal with those outbreaks, but it would be a mistake to think that if you get high rates of vaccination that you won’t get cases. The UK is proving the exact opposite of that.

Scott Morrison on the screen while in quarantine at The Lodge during question time yesterday. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP