SUBJECTS: Barnaby Joyce elected Leader of the National Party; Vaccine rollout; National quarantine; Morrison Government failing Australians during a health pandemic; Climate change; Net zero by 2050.

MARCUS PAUL, HOST: Anthony Albanese, good morning.

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

PAUL: Yes, you too, Albo. I want to play for you some audio. It goes for about 15 seconds. It's probably the most uninspiring bit of audio that I'll play from a politician. Here we go.

BARNABY JOYCE, LEADER OF THE NATIONAL PARTY (RECORDING): The important thing is, this is about, first and foremost, the people of Australia, then the people of regional Australia and to be brought about by that wonderful team, the Nationals.

PAUL: Are you awake, Anthony? Have I still got you there? I mean, how inspiring is that?

ALBANESE: Well, everyone knows that this has always only been about Barnaby. It hasn't been about the people of Australia. This is an act of self-indulgence at a time when we're still dealing with the pandemic. Of course, the last time that Barnaby Joyce tried to seize the leadership of the National Party was at the height of the bushfires. This is someone who is self-obsessed, who never has the national interest at the heart of what his actions are. And I think that showed yesterday.

PAUL: Well, we've had so many changes to the Nationals leadership. I think it might have been on the cards after the lacklustre performance last week of the acting Prime Minister, Michael McCormack. You know, he was dignified yesterday. But I don't know whether it's the right move to replace him with the bloke who's failed previously.

ALBANESE: Well, he's failed consistently when he was in charge of finance. He’s mixed up, he didn't know the difference between his billions and his trillions. When he was a minister, he promised to build dams and do all these things, and nothing happened. He was someone who has, I think, just put forward some quite extraordinary propositions. On climate change, he just doesn't think it's real and wants to back new coal-fired power stations. There will be enormous tension within the Coalition as a result of this.

PAUL: When you say enormous tension, why? Is that because Scott Morrison is finally waking up to the idea that we do need to set a target by at least 2050 at the very latest. Otherwise, we're quite simply, you know it Anthony, we're going to be left behind by other developed nations. They will start to not want to take us seriously. I mean, you could see at the G7, you know, it was almost embarrassing, to be perfectly honest. Here is every other developed nation in the world setting targets, wanting to protect our planet and do something about the transition to renewables, and yet Scott Morrison’s sitting there on a lump of coal.

ALBANESE: Well, the fact is that the rest of the world are moving. And Boris Johnson is no radical socialist. This is the leader of conservative Britain, the leader of the Conservative Party, who, like Margaret Thatcher before him, understands that climate change is a threat to our economy and to our way of life. And there he was at a press conference with Scott Morrison arguing what Australia's position should be and Scott Morrison is struck silent, just standing behind him. It was quite embarrassing for us, the fact that Scott Morrison could not get a meeting with Joe Biden, the President of the United States, one-on-one. The first time I've ever seen that happen. Every other Australian Prime Minister has had no difficulties in having one-on-one meetings with our most important ally. And yet, climate change, undoubtedly, is a real barrier. And what's more, we're missing out on the opportunity that is there. Good action on climate change will create jobs, particularly in regional Australia. And Barnaby Joyce is just someone who isn't just stuck in the past, he wants to drag the rest of Australia back there just to keep him company.

PAUL: How are we traveling, Anthony? As you know, in Victoria in the last couple of weeks, we've had an outbreak and a quasi-lockdown. In Sydney at the moment, I mean, we're battling on the eastern seaboard, particularly around the Bondi-Woollahra area again with another minor outbreak. All of these bloody outbreaks stemming from hotel quarantine. Last time I checked, the Hilton in Sydney was built for tourists, not for quarantining against the most deadly pandemic of our lifetimes. 

ALBANESE: Well, there have now been 24 outbreaks of hotel quarantine. This Government had two jobs this year: to fix hotel quarantine and to rollout the vaccination program effectively. Just three per cent of Australians are fully vaccinated. Three in every 100. And the hotel quarantine system continues to fail, it continues to lead to lockdowns and restrictions on our activity. And the Government continues to not accept responsibility. They had a phone hook-up yesterday with all of the state premiers who all said we have issues with supply of the vaccines. And the press conference afterwards, Scott Morrison's spokespeople that he's appointed were out there saying, well, there's no more demands from the state and territories. What nonsense. They've all been crying out for quarantine.

PAUL: They have almost been bickering over who has the most or the least. I mean, Gladys Berejiklian is calling out and demanding that New South Wales receive its fair share, considering we've got the issues in the eastern suburbs. Of course, when we had the problem in Melbourne a couple of weeks ago, they got extra doses. I'm a little worried as well, before I let you go, Anthony, about the take-up now given the change of advice. Now that's not necessarily the Government's fault. Of course, health advice does change from time to time, we need to follow it.

ALBANESE: Health advice does change. But I tell you what, Marcus. Four jobs: fix national quarantine, rollout the vaccines, have a public information campaign and then produce our own mRNA vaccine. They are the four things the Government should have been doing from a year ago. Now the public information campaign, this is a Government that has spent a billion dollars on advertising and has no effective advertising campaign to promote the use of the vaccine. It's just extraordinary. And yesterday, you had one of the people in charge saying that we're waiting to get more supply before we rollout a public information campaign because otherwise we won't be able to keep up with an increased demand. For goodness’ sakes. This virus has been around now since the beginning of 2020. We're now in late June 2021 and they just haven't got their act together on those basics. 

PAUL: All right, Anthony, good to have you on. I appreciate it. Busy couple of weeks ahead. Chat soon. 

ALBANESE: Thanks very much, Marcus.

ENDS