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Prime Minister Scott Morrison:“There are a lot of heroes of hindsight at the moment out there. My government is focusing on the future.”Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

“It was very clear from those discussions that the focus was not on Australia,the focus was on where people were dying in their thousands,tens of thousands,in the northern hemisphere,” he said on Thursday.

“What was necessary was for us to establish our own sovereign vaccine manufacturing capability,which we did. And that has been an important and significant part of our vaccination program,and that has kept thousands,if not millions,of Australians safe from the virus.”

Email correspondence between Pfizer and Australia’s Department of Health released under freedom of information laws on Wednesday revealed lawyers on both sides were still working out details of confidential disclosure agreements in late July last year as the United Kingdom and US signed deals for millions of doses.

Labor said the emails showed Pfizer was explicitly telling Australia other countries were moving quickly.

“It’s there in black and white that Pfizer was offering to do deals in June. Other countries were stepping up at that stage. And more than 30 companies had deals before Australia signed up in November,” Labor leader Anthony Albanese said on Thursday.

He said the emails,which showedPfizer requested a meeting with Health Minister Greg Hunt in late June,indicated the government had been too slow to move on a deal.

“The reason why we’re in lockdown today is because of the failure of the government on the vaccine rollout,” he said.

So far,more than 21.5 million doses of both the AstraZenenca and Pfizer vaccines have been administered across the country,and more than 40 per cent of the eligible population aged 16 and over is fully vaccinated.

Mr Morrison said by mid-October the country would have received enough doses to immunise the entire population. The government earlier this month secured another4 million Pfizer doses from the UK and is working on further dose-swapping arrangements.

“There are a lot of heroes of hindsight at the moment out there,” he said. “My government is focusing on the future. The national plan is the future. The national plan says,let’s get those jabs in those arms. Let’s get Australia open again.

In an interview on Nine’sToday show,Mr Hunt denied the government had been slow and said he and his office had engaged with Pfizer from the early stages of the pandemic.

Asked why he did not meet with Pfizer personally,Mr Hunt said that was the job of the vaccine taskforce headed by Health Department assistant first secretary Lisa Schofield.

“What we created,to look across the world with over 100 different vaccine candidates,was a vaccine taskforce and scientific and technical advisory group led by[former chief medical officer and now Health Department secretary] Brendan Murphy and by one of the most senior people in the department,” Mr Hunt said.

“They worked right across all of these agreements – we were deeply engaged.”

The Health Minister wrote to the head of Pfizer Australia on May 10. A spokesman for the minister said once there was a recommendation from the Science and Industry Technical Advisory Group to proceed with a deal,Mr Hunt personally met with senior Pfizer officials,including the Australian chief executive,in late October. That meeting,the spokesman said,led to the conclusion of theNovember 5 deal for 10 million doses.

The Commonwealth has since inked further deals with the company,for a total of 40 million doses this year,60 million for next year and 25 million in 2023.

“The minister continues to have multiple direct conversations with both the Pfizer Australia leadership and other senior leadership of vaccine partners,” the spokesman said.

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