Doctors are blaming a "budget version" of the flu vaccine available in Australia for the terrible flu season's abnormally high death toll, while Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy is denying the claim.

Laboratory tests confirm that 217,000 Australians caught the flu this year.  That's more than double 2015's total, which was just north of 100,000.  The virus killed 546 people nationally this year, with the median age of death being 85 years.

New South Wales Health Minister Brad Hazzard acknowledged, "I think at this stage what we got unfortunately was a vaccine, with the benefit of hindsight - and hindsight is a wonderful thing - that wasn't quite up to it," he said, as quoted by the ABC.  He added that state, territory, and federal health officials plan to discuss it over the coming weeks.

"What we need is a better vaccine, not one that's just a variation of what we've been doing over the last 30 or 40 years," said Canberra Hospital Infectious Diseases physician Peter Collignon, who is the executive director of ACT Pathology.

One of the problems was that three strains of the flu - AH3N2, AH1N1, and influenza B - were in circulation.  One of them mutated during the season and the weak sauce vaccine couldn't protect against it, leaving elderly patients at greater risk.  "So the elderly had a double impact, as you might think, from a virus that changed a bit and, generally, they have a weaker immune response," said Professor Murphy, defending Australia's flu fighting effort as one of the best in the world. 

Another problem was that better vaccines that might have prevented much suffering and even death aren't available in Australia, because the manufacturers didn't file the right paperwork.  One vaccine, unavailable in Oz, is:  Four times stronger than the weaker version; 24 percent more effective; and costs only $8 per jab.

"We didn't have a choice to get the better one," said Professor Paul Van Buynder, chair of the Immunisation Coalition.  "Paying for a vaccine that doesn't work is a false economy, if you can stop tens of thousands of people getting sick or hospitalisation the extra expense is worth undertaking," he added, "This was a disaster year and if we don't get policy change as a result heaven help me."

Brendan Murphy says officials are now talking about adding the new jabs to the nation's immunisation regimen:  "For the first time there has been a really strong case for us to look at these enhanced vaccines just for the elderly and we are absolutely doing that right now to see what fast-tracking process we can provide to deliver that," he said.