National Partnership Agreement on Essential Vaccines 2015-2016

All State and Territory governments are eligible for reward payments.

Under the National Partnership Agreement on Essential Vaccines (the NP), State and Territory governments are eligible for reward payments if they achieve at least two of the four benchmarks listed in the NP. All State and Territory governments met this requirement.

The four benchmarks are:

• Benchmark 1: maintaining or increasing vaccine coverage for Indigenous Australians
• Benchmark 2: maintaining or increasing coverage in agreed areas of low immunisation coverage
• Benchmark 3: maintaining or decreasing wastage and leakage
• Benchmark 4: maintaining or increasing vaccination coverage for four year olds.

As illustrated in table 1:

• all jurisdictions met benchmark 1
• all jurisdictions met benchmark 2
  • NSW and WA had agreed areas of low coverage and achieved benchmark 2
  • Victoria, Queensland, SA, Tasmania, the ACT and the NT had no areas of low immunisation coverage and have been assessed to have achieved benchmark 2.¹
• all jurisdictions met benchmarks 3 and 4.

¹ Areas of low immunisation coverage are specified as areas with coverage rates 5 per cent or lower than the national average rate and with at least 2 per cent of the State population for the relevant age group (see Appendix A).

The specification for benchmark 2 does not state how to assess jurisdictions which have no low coverage areas. From the previous cycle of reporting, the Productivity Commission has taken the approach whereby a jurisdiction that has no low coverage areas for both age groups (and for which this has been independently verified by the Commonwealth Department of Health) is assessed as having met the benchmark.

The intent of the benchmark is to improve coverage in low coverage areas, therefore a result of no low coverage areas indicates the intent has been met. This approach differs to that used for earlier cycles of reporting, where independent verification of the low coverage areas was not available within the required timeframes for reporting (this did not impact on the eligibility of jurisdictions for reward payments).