SUBJECTS: George Christensen’s comments to the Parliament; vaccine rollout; lockdowns; climate change; IPCC report.

MARCUS PAUL, HOST: Good morning, mate. 

ANTHONY ALBANESE, LEADER OF THE AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY: Good morning, Marcus. Good to be with you. 

PAUL: George Christensen, he was on the floor of Parliament yesterday declaring that masks don't work and lockdowns don't work. He basically says, 'Well, we need to accept that tragically, some people will die, but we need to get on with it'.

ALBANESE: Well, people in Greater Sydney and other parts of Australia are doing it really tough at the moment. They're making sacrifices. They're worried about their health. They're worried about their jobs. They're worried about their way of life and when it will return to normal. And here we have someone who has the great honour of representing a community in our National Parliament, spreading misinformation, spreading stuff that's just about conspiracy theories, and just not adding anything constructive to our national debate. And I thought it was time that we called it out.

PAUL: Why isn't the Prime Minister calling it out? Why isn't Scott Morrison censuring this man?

ALBANESE: Scott Morrison in the end voted for the motion that I moved on the floor of the Parliament. 

PAUL: Okay.

ALBANESE: But there was a 15-minute speech from myself followed by 15 minutes from Scott Morrison in which he did not mention the name of George Christensen, or named him as the Member for Dawson. It was like Voldemort from Harry Potter. He was the person who couldn't be named. Now, that's not leadership. Leadership is calling it out, saying this man is peddling misinformation, people shouldn't be listening to him, he should be behaving responsibly. And that's what leadership is. And I think the Prime Minister failed the test yesterday by going one step forward but then failing in actually calling it out explicitly, which is what people have to do when there's misinformation. They should call it out explicitly, name it, say it's wrong. This is a guy who attended the rally in Mackay on the day that those rallies occurred a couple of Saturdays ago where we saw police assaulted, we saw a police horse assaulted. We saw despicable behaviour against our frontline police officers, men and women who are bravely protecting us as a community who deserve better. And the fact that the Prime Minister couldn't name him in a 15-minute address to the Parliament was, I think, quite astonishing.

PAUL: All right, well, just moving away from that, let's go to the vaccine rollout. It was finally, I guess, admitted, kind of, that it is a race. Semantics aside, putting the words aside for a moment, only 36 per cent of staff in aged care are fully vaccinated. Just 44 per cent of residents in disability care are fully vaccinated. That's despite the Federal Government telling us, assuring us, they'd all be vaccinated by Easter. I mean, it's a failure in policy. And it's great that we've got Moderna coming on board with another mRNA vaccine. But unfortunately, in some cases, like here in Sydney, it's almost like the horse has bolted.

ALBANESE: Well, Malcolm Turnbull has described this as the greatest public policy failure in Australia's history since Federation. And that's from a former Liberal Prime Minister. What we've seen here, and again, we saw it this week with the announcement or re-announcement re Moderna, is Moderna is a vaccine that delivered 100 million doses to the US administration last year in 2020. It was approved across Europe, across Asia, Japan, other countries, in January, February and March of this year. We are at August, and we're just getting round to the preliminary approval of a drug of which at the moment, as we speak, we have no doses here in Australia. This has always been a race. Always been a race. It is a race to get the vaccine done. It is a race to get national quarantine facilities, which at the moment, of course, we have none, except for Howards Springs. None throughout the whole country. And if we're going to return to normal, we need two things to be done. The Prime Minister had two big jobs this year. Vaccines and quarantine. And we have failed on both of them.

PAUL: Alright. To the IPCC report of just the other day, much has been said about it. I was a little disappointed in the Government's response. There was a lot of obfuscation and ignoring the calls to set some sort of target by 2030 - 2050 is way too late. You say the IPCC report is another clear sign that the world is going to move rapidly toward renewable energy. We know climate change means worsening bushfires, worse floods and worse droughts. For Australia, it is a threat to our way of life and a threat to jobs. But it's also an opportunity, Anthony.

ALBANESE: It certainly is. It's an opportunity to create jobs by having low emissions technology, the cheapest form of new energy in Australia is renewables. And you can create jobs whilst reducing energy prices, therefore making advanced manufacturing more competitive, embracing new technology not describing it, as the Prime Minister did during the election campaign, that somehow moving over a period of time in a sensible way to electric vehicles, as the whole world is, as they now acknowledge is happening, is going to end the weekend. This fear campaign that seems to characterise Scott Morrison and his prime ministership needs to end. And the truth is that a clean energy future will be one that creates jobs, doesn't destroy them, creates opportunities that are there in our region as well. We can be a renewable energy superpower for the world. And we should be.

PAUL: Well, Anthony, what we need are leaders that are not only for today, but our future. I want my grandchildren and great-grandchildren, further generations, to enjoy a climate that is hospitable. I want them to be able to go to the Great Barrier Reef and not see the whole thing bleached. I want them to not suffer extended droughts and mind-numbingly brutal bushfires. We need a government that looks toward the future rather than just propping itself up with donations from the fossil fuel industry. It's time to get off the teat of those big multinationals that pay little or no tax. And as you say, it's time to look to a renewable future. Does that mean we shut down coal-fired power stations tomorrow? No, of course it doesn't. It means we need to transition. But without a target, and while we're fumbling and bumbling with the figures on an international level to make ourselves appear like we're doing something when we're really not, we need to ensure that future generations are catered for.

ALBANESE: That is right. And we need to adopt, as the rest of the world has, net zero emissions by 2050. We need to join with the rest of the world, not be sitting in a corner with a few countries shouting at the moon that we don't want any of that future. And Australia has so much to gain but so much to lose. And it's only 18 months ago that our country was on fire. The whole of the southeast coast was on fire. South Australia was devastated. That followed prolonged drought, which created the conditions, of course, for the extreme fires that we saw, with catastrophic consequences. And what this report warns, from the world's preeminent scientists, is that those extreme weather events will be more common. And we're seeing it now in Russia. We're seeing it in Greece. We're seeing it in China with extreme floods. We're seeing these events happen more often and closer together and be more intense. Now, that's not to say that every extreme event is the direct result of climate change. It is to look at the patterns which are there, to look at the consequences of not acting. And we have a huge responsibility for ourselves, but importantly for our children and our grandchildren, as you say, Marcus. And responsible governments need to lead. The Biden administration is leading. What Joe Biden shows is the difference that, when you change the government, you can make to the country and indeed to the globe. And I want to lead a Government that joins with the Biden administration in taking the action that is necessary.

PAUL: We will have no choice. Given the latest scientific information, we'll have no choice. Otherwise, there's no future. We need to take it dead set seriously. Before I let you go, Albo, I was watching Question Time last week. I'm one of those. Barnaby Joyce. Two things. I liked your reply to, I don't know what he's on about, but he's certainly not answering the question. And then of course, he hopped on a flight on Thursday night to get out of Canberra. I'm sure that you would have loved to have come back to Sydney. I'm sure there are many MPs in Canberra that would have loved to have gone home for the weekend to see their family. I don't buy this nonsense that he didn't know that Armidale would go into lockdown. He's the second in charge, if you like, Deputy Prime Minister. I was very critical of him earlier this week, saying that he damn well should be in Canberra. We're dealing with a national emergency. And yet here he is hopping on a taxpayer-funded jet to get back to Armidale. I don't think it's good enough from a Deputy PM.

ALBANESE: Well, I think, really, that is a matter for him. I would not be critical of anyone for going to see their family. I know how tough it is to be apart. But I certainly have made the decision at the moment to be basing myself in Canberra, as have a range of colleagues from throughout the country, it's got to be said, because if we were in Sydney or in a region that's a hotspot, then you are locked down. And that means you can't carry out the duties that you have.

PAUL: Well, let me put it this way then, would you travel to Sydney? Obviously, you can't because you'd need to go into quarantine. That's effectively what the Deputy Prime Minister has done. I would have thought he'd be better placed in Canberra. Look, I know it's hard. I understand and I appreciate you saying that everybody has a right to see their family. But there are literally millions of Australians that can't see their family at the moment. It seems the Deputy Prime Minister, at taxpayer expense, can just hop on a plane and go and see his and then not worry to go back to work.

ALBANESE: Well, Australians are doing it tough throughout the entire country. I think that it is really a matter for him. So I'm not going to be critical of the personal choices that people make. I've made my choices, which are very difficult. But it pales into complete insignificance compared with those people who are doing it tough, who aren't able to go to work, who aren't able to see their loved ones. The Prime Minister promised, I'll make this point, Marcus, the Prime Minister promised that Australians who were stranded overseas would be home by Christmas. Truly, didn't say which Christmas. But when he promised that around about this time or a bit later than now in 2020, people thought that would be taken seriously. And of course, 36,000 Australians remain stranded overseas. We have unaccompanied children who are still stranded overseas, who their parents aren't able to see them. I just find it completely hopeless the way that this Government has handled all of those issues.

PAUL: Good to have you on. Thank you, Anthony. Appreciate it.

ALBANESE: Thanks, Marcus. 

PAUL: Federal Labor Leader, Leader of the Opposition, Anthony Albanese.

ENDS