SUBJECTS: Vaccine supply; vaccine rollout; national quarantine; Scott Morrison failing Australians during a health pandemic; regional Australia being left behind during the pandemic; Sydney lockdowns. 

MICHAEL BAILEY, HOST: Good morning to you, Albo. How are you going, mate?

ANTHONY ALBANESE, LEADER OF THE AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY: Good morning. I'm very well. Greetings from Gladstone. 

BAILEY: Look, what are you doing there? Obviously, it is a boomtown at the moment.

ALBANESE: It is. I'm here with Matt Burnett, our candidate, who, of course, is the Mayor and the Labor candidate for Flynn. Last night, we attended the launch of a new local independent paper, which is a great thing. And this morning, we'll be visiting a GP clinic who haven't been able to access any of the vaccine, talking about the problems with the rollout of the vaccine in regional communities. And then we're actually doing something a bit fun, I'm going to a local NRL Junior conference being based here in Gladstone today.

BAILEY: I noticed the front page of the Australian when it comes to the vaccine, 'Flood of Pfizer finally here', Australia's clenched a potentially game changing deal to triple its access to the Pfizer, up to one million doses from July 19. And the weird thing is, it is going to be available everywhere, isn't it? You can pop into Bunnings, pick up a sausage and pick up a jab. I mean, that sounds pretty weird.

ALBANESE: Well, you can do that in other places around the world. Here, you can't even pop into your doctor, that's been the problem. And the Government's own figures, that there'd be 750,000 doses during July and then August and then 1.3 million after that, so in seven weeks’ time. So I'm not quite sure how that is a tripling. But congrats to the Government's spin there once again. But people know that we're last in the world with regard to this rollout, last in the developed world that is, and not in the top 100 of countries. So we've really squandered the advantage that we had last year where we were doing well. And I think the failure to do enough deals with enough pharmaceutical companies for sufficient quantity has meant that so many people out there are frustrated because they want to be vaccinated, but they haven't been able to be.

BAILEY: I was talking to the local pharmacist yesterday and it looks like they've been given the green light to actually do the injections. So that is going to be a big boom, because there's so many pharmacies that you can walk into and roll up your sleeve and away you go. Because you can get the flu jab as we speak, so why not the COVID-19? Should have happened months ago.

ALBANESE: Pharmacists were saying this last year that they were up for this. And it's not a complex exercise. It is just like the flu jab. And I got my flu jab at my local pharmacist just a couple of months ago. And that's what you do. And we had this resource that just hasn't been used because the big issue has been supply. And the good thing about today is at least the Government is acknowledging that the problem has been supply. It is as simple as that. There just hasn't been enough vaccines. And then the second problem, of course, is that we haven't had national quarantine. And that's led to the circumstance whereby there were 12 million Australians locked down last week. And my hometown of Sydney remains really problematic. There are 38 new cases yesterday and increasing numbers of people in hospital, including in ICU. It's a real issue. And of course, they've extended the lockdown there now for an additional week, at least a three-week lockdown. It will have a real impact on businesses, which is why we had to get this right. I spoke to a local business that rang me last night. The fellow who runs it was in tears. He just doesn't think he's going to survive.

BAILEY: So many of these stories that get untold. And they should be making news all the time. Here's another 15 businesses, here's their names, if you can help them out, please go along. What are your thoughts that once you've been vaccinated with one and two, should you be able to roam when there's a lockdown?

ALBANESE: The key is to get enough people vaccinated so that we can all get out and about. That's the key. we need to avoid lockdowns. And the way to do it is to vaccinate our population and to have national quarantine, just like we have at Howard Springs. I visited Wellcamp, the site at Toowoomba, that the Palaszczuk Government put forward a submission on last October. I mean, it is nine months ago. Everyone could have been gone through there safely, just like at Howard Springs, purpose-built, you have cabins that are not sharing ventilation like in a hotel. Hotels aren't built for medical quarantine. They're built for tourists. And we know there has been 26 breaches. And that has had real consequences, the latest of which has cost billions and billions of dollars. It has cost businesses that will disappear, has cost jobs. And we need to do better. Australians have been magnificent during this whole period since 2020. They've made sacrifices. They've done their bit. They need the Government to step up as well and to have less spin and more action.

BAILEY: Well, you must be happy. You must acknowledge that the Government has finally pulled their finger out and got all these Pfizer's shots in. Because let's face it, Europe has been holding back on delivering goods to us because they were looking after their own people. It was a dog-eat-dog world out there, wasn't it?

ALBANESE: It is not really what's happened, though. There's been no breaches of any contracts that we had for the vaccine. Not one. The real problem is we just didn't have enough. And the Government thought, 'Well, we'll do AstraZeneca, we will make it here and that will do'. The problem is that they didn't do risk mitigation, they didn't put their eggs in more baskets. For example, in the UK, when AstraZeneca became a bit of an issue for younger age groups, they just substituted Moderna. We didn't have anything to substitute. That's the problem. And so it's created a real issue here. And it has meant under 10 per cent of Australians are fully vaccinated. That compares with what's going on in other parts of the world. All those people that you see at Wimbledon in the crowd, watching Ash Barty with her magnificent win last night, they are all vaccinated, all of them.

BAILEY: It's incredible, isn't it? I suppose our only other option was a wing and a prayer and that's not working out well for people in Sydney. Anthony, have a great weekend. I'm running out of time.

ALBANESE: Always good to talk to you. 

BAILEY: Make sure you pop into Rockhampton next time, okay?

ALBANESE: Indeed. I have been to lots of places and I'll be in Moranbah on Sunday, so really getting out and about here in Queensland.

BAILEY: Well, keep the faith.

ENDS