Daniel Andrews tears into Commonwealth’s vaccine rollout, calls out ‘unfair’ supply issues

Scott Morrison has hit back after Dan Andrews accused him of hatching a secret deal to give NSW an unfair share of vaccines.

Scott Morrison has hit back after Daniel Andrews accused him of treating Victoria like a doormat and offering NSW an unfair share of vaccines.

NSW received a whopping 45 per cent of the Pfizer doses allocated to GP clinics in August.

Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia received far less than their fair share.

Mr Andrews said Victorians “would be excused for being quite angry” and said the state could be closer to its vaccination targets if it had received its share of jabs.

“I signed up to the national plan to vaccinate our nation, not a national plan to vaccinate Sydney,” Mr Andrews said.

“We have seen hundreds of thousands of vaccines that should have come and should now be in the arms of Victorians going into Sydney and into GP practices in NSW.”

Daniel Andrews has ripped into the Commonwealth’s Covid-19 vaccine rollout, accusing Scott Morrison of pouring more jabs into NSW at the expense of anywhere else in the country. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Crosling

The Prime Minister hit back at the impassioned spray, insisting “I don’t share that view.”

NSW was receiving 32 per cent of the national Pfizer vaccine allocation in late June when Sydney’s Covid-19 situation worsened.

That was roughly in line with NSW‘s proportion of the national population, but last month the allocation jumped to 45 per cent.

“This was not announced. This was done without anyone knowing, and the Commonwealth have got caught doing it so it needs to stop,” Mr Andrews said.

“There needs to be a make good. There needs to be a reckoning where additional doses come to Victoria.”

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has been accused by Daniel Andrews of handing more Covid jabs to NSW. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Gary Ramage

The Victorian Premier accused the federal government of forcing other states to play an “egg and spoon race” while NSW sprinted ahead.

“Some don’t like to see it as a race, but a race it is,” Mr Andrews said.

“What I don’t know is that Premier Berejiklian is in a sprint, while the rest of us are supposed to do some kind of egg and spoon thing.

“These allocations are totally unfair and need to stop. We need to get the doses we didn’t get fast tracked to us.

“That’s as constructive as I can be. I want to be plain spoken on these things. I’m not about getting angry for its own sake, but these things need to be called out.”

Scott Morrison hit back at Mr Andrews and rejected suggestions Victoria had been blindsided.

“I don’t share the view,” the Prime Minister told Sky News.

“Victoria had doses brought forward in their cases in their first crisis, and when they were hit again, we brought forward doses.”

Mr Morrison said millions of doses from the UK and Singapore were shared evenly among the states, after a shipment from Poland went to NSW.

“I wasn’t going to have doses moved from other states to NSW, I went out and got more doses from Poland,” he said.

Mr Andrews said he did not wish to quarrel, but said it was important to call out and urged the Commonwealth to rectify the supply issues.

“We are not doormats that will sit here and cop this,” he said.

“We need a square up with this. It is up to the Commonwealth. They designed the system this way and created this problem.”