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25 November 2021

The tech-bungling Morrison Government that unleashed Robodebt on innocent Australians, and botched the COVIDSafe app, has now been up to its old tricks in relation to the vaccine certificate.
 
Government Services Minister, Senator Linda Reynolds, failed to plan and ensure the federal vaccine certificate system would work with existing health software for the entire state of Tasmania.
 
As a result the records of thousands of Australians who had been vaccinated—and needed to prove their vaccination status at work—went missing and did not appear on the immunisation register or as a vaccine certificate.
 
Was this massive bungle announced to the Australian public or the people impacted?
 
No, it was covered up while Senator Reynolds, who had been caught napping, tried to play catch up by quietly deploying Services Australia staff to Tasmania to manually input the missing health records.
 
The Minister only finally fessed up in response to a series of letters from Senator Catryna Bilyk by blaming the Tasmanian Liberal Government.
 
Senator Reynolds said Services Australia staff had to be sent “to work with TAS Health at the Royal Hobart Hospital vaccination hub, to assist with issues TAS Health was experiencing with transmitting data to the AIR due to software constraints.”
 
Senator Reynolds has not revealed if there have been similar vaccine certificate bungles in other states and refused to answer other questions put by Senator Bilyk.
 
Senator Bilyk said: “The Minister revealed this vaccination record blunder, but refused to answer my questions about the incident, referring me instead to the Tasmanian Health Service.”
 
Shadow Government Services Minister Bill Shorten said: “Minister Reynolds needs to reveal who was responsible for this software failure, how many similar failures have occurred around the nation, and what steps have been taken to fix them and ensure there won’t be a repeat.”