Andrew Barr said vaccine supply had been the biggest constraint on vaccination take up, and the ACT's effective mass vaccination program showed it was possible to reach most of the population for protection against coronavirus.

"There was always a question about the vaccine hesitant or the anti-vax community in terms of how big that would be as a proportion of any population, but the Commonwealth seemed to view it at being about 20 per cent when I think in reality in some jurisdictions it might be that high, but in many it's significantly smaller. We should have aimed higher," Mr Barr said on Wednesday.

Speaking on a webinar organised by the Australia Institute, a progressive think tank, Mr Barr said the ACT would not have achieved high vaccination rates if it had settled for a baseline vaccination program.

"You have to take vaccines to people, often in very vulnerable circumstances or in circumstances where trust in the health system or trust in government is very low. And so partnership with community sector health providers was essential and continues to be," he said.

"It was always the case that with vaccine supply not an issue, as long as you then put in place a set of vaccine delivery mechanisms that would cover not just your mainstream middle-class communities, but extend more broadly across any number of different sectors of the entire community, whether that was young people, Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people, people from multicultural communities, those in public housing or who are experiencing homelessness.

"All sorts of outreach programs that were put in place - and that is the difference between an 80 per cent vaccination rate and 99 per cent plus."

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National cabinet earlier this year agreed to a national plan for transitioning Australia's COVID-19 response that set vaccination thresholds of 70 and 80 per cent before significant changes were to be made in responding to community outbreaks of COVID-19.

Mr Barr on Wednesday said outbreak modelling had been commissioned on those thresholds, but other jurisdictions had now proven higher vaccination rates were possible.

"It became very clear during the course of our vaccination program that the only thing holding the ACT back from where we are now was lack of vaccine supply. And I think it's proven to be the case in other jurisdictions as well, particularly with the added impetus of having an outbreak and being in lockdown, you do see ACT, NSW and Victoria having the highest vaccination rates," he said.

Australia has a first dose vaccination rate among the population aged 16 and above of 90.9 per cent, while every state and territory is above 80 per cent. The second-dose coverage nationally is 83.9 per cent, while 96.6 per cent of Canberrans aged 12 and over have had two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine.

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Mr Barr said national cabinet had been a positive tool that had broadened the advice available to the Prime Minister, but there had been an unnecessary level of secrecy sought for the process.

"It's been an opportunity to air particular issues or policy approaches, to look at what's worked in other jurisdictions and what hasn't. But undoubtedly it has been frustrating for the Prime Minister because it has, I guess, demonstrated to the nation that the Prime Minister doesn't hold all the power in the country," he said.

Mr Barr, who declared he hated journalists and was over the mainstream media in 2018 before expressing regret at the comments, said on Wednesday that Canberra's media was closer to the community and had not had the polarising effect in the lockdown and COVID-19 outbreak as other media outlets had in other states.

"It is very clear that in Australia now, the commercial media - so that that has to generate revenue in order to fund its news gathering operations - is largely now gone down an American path where it chooses a tribe, a key audience, based on its ideology, the ideology of the media outlet, and largely delivers news and opinion to that cohort," he said.

"I feel as a nation we've now really almost completely lost a straight down-the-line news reporting outlet. I'd say Australian Associated Press is as close as you get now. We have a blurring of news and opinion. And opinion is fine as long as it's labelled as opinion."

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