Culture

There’s Drama Between The State Premiers Over Pfizer And Dan Andrews Is Real Pissed

"Premier Berejiklian is in a sprint, while [Victoria has] to do some sort of egg and spoon thing."

by Edwina Storie  8 September 2021
Image of Qld, Victoria and NSW premiers

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Tensions between the state premiers are running red hot right now after the ABC revealed that NSW may have received more Pfizer vaccines than the other states.

Yesterday, with a daily COVID case count of 246, premier Daniel Andrews got very cranky at his daily press conference (he’s done a run of 100 nonstop) and implied NSW was getting more Pfizer than Victoria.

“I signed up to a national plan to vaccinate our nation, not a national plan to vaccinate Sydney,” said Andrews. “Some don’t like to see this as a race, but a race it surely is. What I didn’t know, was that premier Berejiklian is in a sprint, while the rest of us have to do some sort of egg and spoon thing.”

Watch the moment here:

There was a good reason for the crankiness: an analysis of publicly available data done by the ABC shows that, during August, NSW got 45 percent of the Pfizer that was allocated to primary caregivers (like GPs). Meanwhile, Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia did not get their fair share, if you were to calculate it on population size.

While Victoria has 26 percent of the population, it only got 21 percent of the Pfizer. Similarly, Queensland has 20 percent of the population, but got closer to 15 percent, and Western Australia, which houses 10 percent of the population got seven percent of the Pfizer.

The ABC claims that, based on the numbers, “Victoria may have missed out on up to 343,000 Pfizer jabs between June and September, Queensland 100,000 jabs and Western Australia 114,000 jabs.”

And the Horizon Allocation document seems to plan for Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia to continue to receive less than their fair shares.

According to the ABC, some of that extra Pfizer came from the Poland delivery — remember that? When Scott Morrison gleefully announced on a Sunday morning that Australia would receive 1 million doses “of hope“.

All of this is adding to the ‘PMofNSW’ criticism that Scott Morrison is copping, with other the states implying NSW gets special treatment.

Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said the federal government should back down from any criticism about her state having lower vaccination rates. “Please don’t pick a fight when another state is getting more vaccines,” she said.

But you know what this also adds to? The vaccination hierarchy, as the tension over Pfizer somewhat adds to the perception that it is a better vaccine. Yes, it has a shorter timeframe between doses (though that recommended timeframe for AstraZeneca has been reduced from 12 weeks down to somewhere between four and eight weeks).

But if people are waiting around for the Pfizer doses, that’s only going to create a longer wait time than the readily available AZ. The best vaccination is the one available right now.