SUBJECTS: NSW reopening from lockdown; Labor’s Buy Australian Plan; nuclear power; Rewiring the Nation; IBAC inquiry.

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO, HOST : Here on 2CC basis, almost on a daily basis we’ve invited Prime Minister Scott Morrison on the program. And he has declined every invitation. However, the Federal Opposition Leader, Anthony Albanese, is about to have his second appearance on the program. The first time, he gatecrashed. This time we’ve actually invited him on. Albo, good morning.

ANTHONY ALBANESE, LEADER OF THE AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY:G’day, mate. It’s been a long time for an invite. I did have to crash to get onto your show.

CENATIEMPO: Well I would have invited you but you turned up by yourself and wandered into the caravan down from the lawn of Parliament House so I couldn't say no.

ALBANESE: As you do.

CENATIEMPO: Now, how was your beer yesterday?

ALBANESE: It was good, mate. It was good. It was at a local craft brewery here in St Peters in my electorate, Wille the Boatman. And the important thing about it was that it was a small business that had survived. And it was really struggling. And one of the people who own it, Pat, he is a lovely bloke. And he put his heart and soul into the business. And it's more like a family, like a lot of small businesses. And he spoke to me a couple of months ago. He was beside himself because he thought he'd have to let staff go and for him up was like, heartbreaking. And he did it really tough. So it was it was great to see him able to open yesterday. And so it went down well. I think that people are making sacrifices. I, of course, was in the Canberra lockdown before I travelled from one lockdown to another in Sydney. So it has been a difficult time, particularly for small businesses in places like hospitality.

CENATIEMPO: The reason I wanted to talk to you today, because this kind of plays into a similar theme, and you've been all over social media for the last 24 hours talking about a Buy Australian campaign that you'll implement if you're successful at the next election. And I've often been, so I've been critical of every stimulus package that any government has ever done, whether it was the $700 checks that you guys handed out, or some of the stuff that this government's done this time. But I've always said if government wants to stimulate the economy, all governments should be mandated that they have to buy Australian products wherever possible. This is kind of what you're talking about.

ALBANESE: That’s exactly what we're talking about. A 10-point Buy Australian Plan, setting up a Future Made in Australia office in the Department of Finance there in Canberra. Legislating, importantly, these rules so that we have a Buy Australian priority. Making sure that there's a secure Australian jobs code which prioritises working for government contracts when they go out with people actually engaging in employing Australians in a fair way and providing opportunity for small business. I saw it, as well, when I was the Infrastructure Minister, one of the things that I implemented after a couple of years, said to my department, why are we just doing, when we largely procure large contracts through state governments of course, it’s largely through them, but why is it that the same couple of companies keep winning all the contracts? Because if they're really big, in the billions of dollars, then they're the only ones with the capacity to do it. And the profits go overseas. If you break up those contracts into smaller packages in the hundreds of millions of dollars as opposed to billions, so they’re still large contracts, then you can attract medium and small Australian firms. And you build that sovereign capability. You build up the capacity of Australian companies to then compete with the really big guys that are all based overseas. And if you take that principle across government, you can make an enormous difference. Your listeners will go to their local butcher or their local shopping centre. One of the things about Canberra is it has those great local shopping centres. And they'll do that because they know they’re supporting local jobs and supporting the local economy and they'll make that effort. Why is it that, at a national level, we can't do that? Apply the same principle to make sure that we're supporting Australian jobs.

CENATIEMPO: I wholeheartedly agree with you. I think that needs to go further than that and apply to state and local governments as well. And I don't know what jurisdiction the federal government has to do that.

ALBANESE: Well, I’ll tell you what we do have, Stephen there, as part of one of our 10 points is to build in this principle for National Partnership agreements. So National Partnership agreements where you have to Commonwealth, state and territory governments and local governments, you can build in that through those agreements so that it applies down the line, if you like, as well. So we want to factor that in. We want all governments, which purchased over the last three years pretty close to $200 billion of goods and services. So it can make a really substantial difference.

CENATIEMPO: How do you, I guess, build value for money into this program? Because obviously, there are going to be certain things, or in most cases, buying Australian is going to be considerably more expensive. Which I don't particularly have a problem with, because you'll pick up at the back end through taxes, etc. But that's obviously got to be a consideration?

ALBANESE: Well, often it’s not. And the thing is, if you build up capacity, then Australian companies can compete. Later this morning, I'll be going, in my own electorate, to a local, relatively small business that employs a couple of hundred people, which is substantial. WJ Sanders. And what they do is they take natural products, our natural resources, and convert it into value adding. And guess what one of the things is? The Melbourne Cup. They make the Melbourne Cup. They make the Australian Open trophy out of gold. They make an enormous difference. And if we're smart about it, Australian firms can compete. But they need to be given that opportunity, they need to build up that capacity. And if we do that, in the end, take, for example, the infrastructure example that I gave you earlier on today. By doing that, we actually ended up at the end of my period as Infrastructure Minister, contracts were coming in less than what they were anticipated to be because there was competition, because we're building that in instead of a particular company essentially getting every single contract. So it actually is smart economics, as well as being good for Australian jobs and an Australian national sovereignty, us being able to make things ourselves.

CENATIEMPO: The limitation of this, Albo, of course, is going to be the fact that our manufacturing base has diminished over a number of decades, trying to build that up again. And I've always said that's the biggest failure of national cabinet was that should have been a focus of how do we build that coming out of this pandemic.

ALBANESE: Absolutely.

CENATIEMPO: But how do you make that happen? I mean, because, it's almost putting the cart before the horse saying we're going to buy Australian before we start making Australian.

ALBANESE: No, well, you need to have contracts to build up those companies. We can compete. We can make things here. The fastest electric vehicle charging stations in the world are being built in Brisbane by a company called Tritium. That is with Australian science and innovation. They're being built there with Australian skills. And they're being exported to North America and to Europe. It’s a great Australian success story. And there are so many of them, if we're smart about it. And that's why this Buy Australian plan fits with our National Reconstruction Fund, a $15 billion fund to support Australian industry, to support the transformation of existing industries, making them more competitive, but also new industries, look at where the jobs of the future are going to be. And it fits, as well, with Jobs and Skills Australia, a body that will create, that will have private sector representation as well as public sector representation, to identify where are the jobs going to be 5,10, 15 years time, how do we make sure we give Australians the skills to be able to take up those jobs.

CENATIEMPO: In order to make this work long-term we're going to need reliable baseload power. In the short-term, we're not going to get that from renewables despite the fact that all of our politicians insist we are. The Federal Government won't take a leadership position on nuclear power. They say they need bipartisan support from you. Will you put nuclear power on the table so we can actually have fair dinkum, cheap, reliable, zero emission energy to make our manufacturing go?

ALBANESE: No, we won't, because that's not the appropriate solution. And that's why nuclear power isn't expanding anywhere in the world. The fact is that the cheapest form of new energy is renewables is in areas like hydrogen. You might have seen the announcement by Twiggy Forrest up in Queensland, in Gladstone, a regional town, that will create many hundreds of jobs there. There'll be a similar proposal for green hydrogen in the Illawarra, in Port Kembla, that Twiggy Forrest has which has received some Federal Government funding. You see the fact that nuclear energy takes a hell of a long time to create. It's not the cheapest form of new energy, which is why we're seeing the shift to renewables, with using new capacity to make sure that you fix issues like baseload issues. And that's why we also will have Rewiring the Nation, which is consistent with what our energy regulator says is the low-hanging fruit. How do we fix transmission. We've got Snowy Hydro 2.0 will come online and not be able to put the power into the grid, not be connected up for a couple of years. That makes no sense at all. We need to fix our electricity transmission system and bring it into the 21st century so that we stabilise the grid.

CENATIEMPO: One last thing before I let you go. You've been a vocal advocate of a federal version of ICAC. I'm vehemently opposed to that. But that's a debate for another day. One of your colleagues, Alex [sic] Byrne has admitted before IBAC in Victoria to being complicit in this branch stacking scandal in the ALP. Are you going to force him onto the crossbenchs?

ALBANESE: Look, I can't comment on legal proceedings that are underway at the moment, the IBAC hearing, so I make no comment on that. But I stand by the fact that I support a National Anti-Corruption Commission. And of course, when these issues were exposed last year, we intervened through the National Executive to intervene into the Victorian branch within 48 hours and suspended the operation of the branch.

CENATIEMPO: I know it's an ongoing thing. But this bloke’s admitted it. You should sack him, shouldn’t you?

ALBANESE: I took decisive action. I'm not going to comment on a legal proceedings that is underway, which IBAC is, and that would be entirely inappropriate. But I've been totally consistent about supporting a National Anti-Corruption Commission. It's important to weed out any corrupt activities wherever they are found.

CENATIEMPO: Albo, Scomo won’t come on the program but I appreciated that you fronted. Thanks for your time this morning.

ALBANESE: No worries, mate.

ENDS