Opposition health spokesman Mark Butler slams Scott Morrison over vaccines, hotel quarantine

Scott Morrison is being blamed for Victoria’s second wave amid a slow vaccine rollout and inaction on hotel quarantine.

Australia’s opposition health spokesman Mark Butler has called Prime Minister Scott Morrison “dangerously complacent” amid criticism of the government’s inaction on hotel quarantine and a slow vaccine rollout.

Mr Butler on Friday called for the government to make urgent changes to the system after a failure in an Adelaide quarantine hotel led to the virus entering Victoria and causing the current outbreak.

Addressing reporters on Friday, Mr Butler said it was the 17th leak from hotel quarantine in the past six months.

“Every single major city in Australia has experienced it, causing, in many cases, very substantial economic cost and huge disruption to the community,” Mr Butler said.

“Scott Morrison has become dangerously complacent about the shockingly slow rate of his vaccine rollout and the failures in hotel quarantine.”

Mark Butler pointed to failures in hotel quarantine and a slow vaccines rollout. Picture: Liana Walker

It comes as Victoria enters a seven-day “circuit-breaker” lockdown after enduring more than 100 days in lockdown last year.

Victorian Acting Premier James Merlino this week said the state would be in a “much better place” had the vaccine rollout been faster.

There is concern this time about the highly infectious nature of the virus in Victoria and the short amount of time it’s able to be passed on.

All Victorians aged 40 and over are eligible to receive either the Pfizer or AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccines as the commonwealth vaccination program expands in the state. Picture: Darrian Traynor/Getty Images

South Australian authorities on Friday said it took mere minutes for the Indian variant to spread from the initial infectious case to a man who later travelled into Melbourne.

There are now more than 10,000 people listed as close or primary contacts and 150 venues of concern.

It comes after Defence Minister Peter Dutton blamed “complacency” among over 50s for the slow vaccine rollout.

Mr Butler said only 2 per cent of Australians had been vaccinated against the virus and only 230 aged care homes in Victoria had received just one dose of the vaccine.

Only 2 per cent of Australians have received the vaccines, according to new figures from the federal government. Picture: Darrian Traynor/Getty Images

“Hundreds of thousands of aged care residents in Victoria remain without full protection because of Scott Morrison‘s failures on the vaccine rollout,” Mr Butler said.

“Scott Morrison needs to come clean with the Australian people about his failures on vaccines and about the failure of the hotel quarantine system instead of continuing to push out these dodgy and misleading statistics.”