SUBJECTS: Labor’s Buy Australian Plan; Deloitte Access Economics report; vaccination rates; encouraging Australians to get vaccinated; the Morrison-Joyce Government’s failures on vaccine supply.

LEON BYNER, HOST: Federal Opposition Leader, Anthony Albanese. Anthony, thanks for joining us today.

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

BYNER: Anthony, why has this been such a trench battle to get this to happen?

ALBANESE: I'm not quite sure what the reason is. But what I know is that Australia under Labor will have a Buy Australian Plan. And it's a practical plan. Ten points as part of it, establishing a Future Made in Australia Office backed up by laws, legislated to ensure that it occurs. And I know firsthand, as you say Leon, people around Australia, particularly during COVID, have had the big campaign about buy local. Because you know that if you buy local, you're keeping money in your local community, you're creating local jobs, you're supporting local businesses. And the same principle should apply nationally. I know that when I became Infrastructure Minister, one of the things that I set about doing was making sure that Australian companies had an opportunity to be a part of major infrastructure projects. And that's drifted away now. If you have a contract for a major project that's worth $3 billion or $4 billion, then inevitably, if you put it in one section, you'll have two or three companies only that have a capacity to participate and all of them, essentially, will have profits that go overseas. Whereas if you break up the contract, if you have smaller packages, then small and medium firms, and we’re talking here still about packages worth hundreds of millions of dollars, but not with a billion dollar in front of it, then they’ll be able to participate, they're able to grow, that builds our sovereign capability. And one of the things that's happened during this pandemic is that it's shown up some of the weaknesses in our national economy. The fact that we're not resilient enough. We don't make enough things here. And that's why I'm determined to have this Buy Australian Plan at the centre of our economic activity with A Future Made in Australia as one of the big themes of the Labor Party that I'm leading into the next election, whenever it is. And when we are elected, this will be a major reform to the way that government actually supports Australians and Australian jobs.

BYNER: Anthony, will you put legislation in place which would essentially force government departments to use Australian-made products?

ALBANESE: We will. We will have a legislative program, we’ll have a program as well, as part of that. One that encourages small business, one that levels the playing field as well with a fair go procurement framework. So we'll require those that gain government contracts to pay their fair share of taxes as well. We'll make that more transparent. We'll have support for specific industry sectors to be able to support them through the government's purchasing power. Now governments around Australia, just in the last three years, have purchased goods and services worth around about $200 billion. So you can make an enormous difference, an enormous difference, if governments across the board, and one of things we'll do is make the Federation more cooperative and we'll make national partnerships that exists across a range of areas between Commonwealth, state and territory and also local government, we’ll work to make sure they maximise their use of local workers and businesses as well.

BYNER: Will there be rules in place to make sure that an Australian firm providing a product to the government does it at a competitive price? Because, of course, it's still taxpayers’ money, isn't it?

ALBANESE: Of course. One of the things, as you say, Leon, is that if you boost competition, you will get better pricing. One of the things that I found as the Infrastructure Minister, and I encouraged, as well, participation of global firms here in Australia, is when you had more overseas companies and more Australian companies participating, rather than the really big companies that are all owned overseas, all of them, then you had a downward pressure on the cost of delivering major infrastructure projects. That made an enormous difference. Now that can occur in terms of science, in terms of the skills that are there, innovation. If you have Australian-based firms as well, they're more likely to use Australian skills and to train up people and to build that capacity and it’s that sovereign capability that will therefore put downward pressure on the cost to government of purchasing over a period of time. But you have to build up that capacity. So this makes good economic sense as well. This isn't about throwing taxpayers’ money at a problem at a cost to the taxpayer. This will save taxpayers money. Because if you have Australian-based firms that are able to compete, that know as well that they can have the confidence with a legislated framework to be able to compete in the marketplace, then you will have downward pressure on costs.

BYNER: There's a Deloitte report out today that says that vaccination is the key to the recovery. Would you concede that this is now on track?

ALBANESE: Well, it certainly has gotten much better because of the increase in supply which is there. What we've been saying for a long period of time, Leon, as you know, was that it was always a race. It was a race about getting supply of vaccines because Australians are one of the highest take-up rates for immunisation in the world. We know that that's the case. But the frustration was there because the supply simply wasn't available. And, as a result, we had lockdowns that simply, here in Sydney, where I am, we have some opening up today. But it has been quite a difficult period because Australia was running last in the developed world for the rollout of the vaccines. And that was always the key, Leon. Always the key.

BYNER: By the way, you've got Queensland and WA, which have plenty of vaccine supply, but they don't seem to be able to convince the population to get it. What should they do about that?

ALBANESE: Well, Leon, the truth is that where there have been lockdowns and crises, the rates have been higher. And where the supply was given, particularly to New South Wales because of the crisis which was here, they’ve had increased access to vaccine supply. So that's when we saw the rates rise. It's as simple as that. And when you have, in your community, lockdowns and you have constant reminders because you can't go to a local coffee shop for a cup of coffee, you can't go to your local pub, you can't go out for a meal, you can't work, in some cases. You look at where the rates have gone extremely high, here in New South Wales. We have rates, for example, here in Blacktown, that quite extraordinary, up above 90 per cent. And that's because that community suffered greatly and then you had an opening up of supply, an opening up of mass vaccination centres. We've only recently had, of course, around Australia, the vaccine opened up to pharmacies. We should have had pharmacies that were trained and were ready to roll out the vaccine at the beginning of this year.

BYNER: Well, they are now, of course. They’re doing a fine job.

ALBANESE: Of course, they're doing a fantastic job and they were always going to, like they do a great job every year with the flu vaccine. So it was never rocket science. And it was always a race. The problem we had was a complacent government that didn't roll out the vaccines quickly enough and, as a result, the economy has really suffered and people’s health has suffered as well.

BYNER: Thanks for coming on this morning. And always welcome to get your view. That's the Federal Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese.

ENDS