Health Minister Greg Hunt has urged parents to get their children vaccinated after Nationals MP George Christensen said "do not get your children vaccinated".
In an online video interview for his own program, the Queensland MP declared "do not vaccinate your children. I probably could not say that clear enough".
The backbench MP claimed the government's program to vaccinate children aged five and above was "nuts".
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"I would flatly plainly disagree with anyone who said that," said Health Minister Greg Hunt, who said he hadn't heard the comments.
Not referring to Mr Christensen in particular, Minister Hunt said, "Frankly, the anti-vaxxers aren't only losing the debate they've lost the debate. We're at a 95 per cent national 16 plus vaccination rate."
Chief Medical Officer Professor Paul Kelly said while he "won't comment on other people's comments, if people could listen to the Chief Medical Officer and my colleagues in the states, we're all of agreement.
"The ATAGI group, which is I would say among the best experts on immunisation in the world, certainly in Australia, we are of one voice: it is very important for children now down to the age of five to be vaccinated."
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https://twitter.com/Mark_Butler_MP/status/1483241679306260481
The Federal Government says almost 400,000 children in the 5-11 age group have received their first dose of the vaccine since the program was launched on January 10.
Professor Kelly was at pains to point out the safety of COVID-19 vaccinations for children.
"We don't have any medicines or any vaccines in Australia that have not gone through the full process of the TGA," he said.
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He added the TGA had looked at "real-world experience of rollouts in other places. We had the advantage of watching multiple millions of children of that age group 5-11 get their first and their second doses in the US they have not seen a single issue in terms of severe safety signals".
Sharing a post from George Christensen, Shadow Health Minister Mark Butler said, "This is what Government MPs are putting out on Australia's deadliest day of the pandemic. Scott Morrison needs to put an end to this and take responsibility for the actions of his backbenchers".
George Christensen has announced he's leaving parliament at the next election.