Scott Morrison Has Completely Cooked It Over Rapid Antigen Tests
Morrison has refused to budge on making RATs for everyone - despite numerous countries around the world doing so.
While countries around the world have stepped up to provide free rapid antigen tests, Scott Morrison has stamped out any suggestion that his government will be doing the same in Australia.
The Prime Minister said on Monday that taxpayer-funded RATs would “undercut” businesses — instead, he announced the federal government will partly fund an order for 84 million kits, to be handed out without cost only to identified close contacts.
“We’ve invested hundreds of billions of dollars getting Australia through this crisis,” he said. “We’re now at a stage of the pandemic where you can’t just make everything free, because when someone tells you they want to make something free, someone’s always going to pay for it, and it will be you.”
Morrison blew $38 billion in JobKeeper to companies that didn’t need it.
Morrison: we can’t afford to provide free Covid tests.— Josh Bornstein (@JoshBBornstein) January 3, 2022
Even the director of Chemist Warehouse, Mario Tascone, has called on Treasurer Josh Frydenberg to remove GST on RATs, saying on Monday that “the thought the government is making 10 percent off millions and millions of packets of sales…really doesn’t sit right”.
The Omicron variant, coupled with social gatherings and travel plans during the holidays, have demonstrated a need for not only ample supply, but widespread accessibility of RATs — especially for vulnerable communities, and help to alleviate pressure on the pathology centres and public health system conducting PCR tests.
Left in the hands of the free market instead of the government, the costs of a RAT kit have been hiked up for whatever meagre supply is left around, with Health Minister Greg Hunt acknowledging last Thursday that price gouging has been taking place in retail stores.
“We can’t have a situation where people at their most vulnerable and their most contagious are wandering around shopping centres looking for tests that don’t exist, and if they do they’re getting ripped off,” said Shadow Treasurer Jim Chalmers. “I think what’s making people absolutely filthy of this, is that they know they’ve got a Prime Minister who’s prepared to spray [billions] of dollars around wasting it on marginal seat rorts, but says that he can’t afford to make tests accessible and affordable for people.”
Australia needs to look no further than the UK, where RAT kits can be ordered and delivered to homes for free, the US which will soon make available 500 million free RAT kits, Hong Kong, Berlin, and Singapore. Yet, Scott Morrison still keeps his head in the sand.
“This is not a medicine, it is a test. And so there is a difference between those two things,” he said.