“Why is the Prime Minister getting herself in such a verbal tangle over when more vaccines will arrive in this country,” asks ACT Leader David Seymour.

“The Australian Government doesn’t seem to have any restrictions on what it can say about impending shipments.

“Yesterday Jacinda Ardern said she was respecting drug companies’ requests not to be specific about when vaccines would arrive, for reasons she then spectacularly failed to articulate.

“Today Australia’s Health Minister Greg Hunt welcomed his country’s second batch of Pfizer vaccines and said the next is expected to arrive next week.

“This will enable Australia to dispense 80,000 doses a week for the next two weeks, Mr Hunt said, before shipments from AstraZeneca arrive in mid-March, enabling the vaccination rate to double.

“But for some reason our Government is keeping us in the dark, seemingly playing a silly game of vaguely under promising in the belief we will all be elated by whatever is eventually delivered.

“From the outset Australia has been clear and open with its people about what could be expected from its vaccination programme and when.

“Doesn’t the New Zealand public deserve to know how many people will be able to be vaccinated on a weekly basis?

“Why can’t our Government deliver the same sort of vaccination experience as the Australians?”

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