Health chief Brendan Murphy’s warning on Covid-19 vaccine rollout message

Scott Morrison’s senior health ­bureaucrat says warning the vaccine rollout is ‘not a race’ is unhelpful.

Health secretary Brendan Murphy says it’s no longer helpful to say the vaccine rollout is not a race. Picture: Martin Ollman

Scott Morrison’s senior health ­bureaucrat says warning the vaccine rollout is “not a race” is unhelpful, just two days after Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack used the phrase.

Health secretary Brendan Murphy acknowledged he was the first public official to say “this is not a race”, after the Prime Minister on Tuesday attributed the remarks to him in federal parliament.

Labor has seized on the comments this week, using them to try to pressure the government over the slow vaccine rollout amid revelations only 9 per cent of the aged-care workforce has been fully vaccinated through the commonwealth’s nursing home program.

“Does the Prime Minister still say vaccinating all Australians, including aged-care residents and workers, is, to quote him, ‘not a race’?” Anthony Albanese asked during question time.

Mr Morrison replied the “race” reference was first said by Professor Murphy in March and had been repeated by him on several occasions.

“I affirmed the remarks of the secretary of Health because all the way through this pandemic, one of the key factors that both our government and the governments around the country, and indeed governments in other countries, is we have always been mindful of the expert advice informing the decisions that we have taken,” the Prime Minister said.

“I do stand by my words. And my words were based on the expert advice of the chair of the Scientific (sic) and Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation, Professor Brendan Murphy, but he was not alone because Queensland Health is also quoted on the third of March 2021, where it says ‘this is not a race’ … on their own Twitter feed.”

Professor Murphy told a Senate estimates hearing he had used the phrase once but did not use it anymore because the vaccine rollout had moved to a different stage.

“It’s not a very helpful phrase now because we are going, we are in action – we are fired up and we are doing it as quickly as possible,” he said. “My advice at the time was we should not race to approve vaccines without going through the normal TGA (Therapeutic Goods Administration) process because we were not in that situation of having thousands of people dying, as the UK and US had done.”

Labor senator Murray Watt questioned how Professor Murphy felt to be “thrown under the bus” by Mr Morrison, but the former chief medical officer rejected the characterisation.

Mr McCormack triggered renewed Labor attacks when he said on Sky News on Sunday the rollout was “not a race” and had to be systematic.

His official Sky transcript does not include him saying it was “not a race” but his office said it appeared to be an oversight and the Department of Infrastructure assisted with transcripts.

A transcript from his press conference later in the day does include the phrase.