SUBJECTS: 2022 Federal Budget; Federal election; Labor’s policy agenda.
 
LEIGH SALES, HOST: The Opposition Leader, Anthony Albanese, joins me now. Thanks for racing upstairs.
 
ANTHONY ALBANESE, LEADER OF THE AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY: It was a bit of a race, Leigh. But I'm here. Not the first time I've used that phrase. It was a race.
 
SALES: In your speech tonight you accused the government of being long on politic, short on plans. But isn't your speech tonight best described as a lot of aspirational sentences with very little detail about how you will actually do anything?
 
ALBANESE: Not at all. There's enormous detail there. Not the least of which is our five-point plan to fix aged care. Putting a nurse in nursing homes, 24/7. Backing increased time for care of 215 minutes in accordance with the Royal Commission recommendations for aged care residents. Better pay for aged care workers. Better food. And better regulations. It follows our comprehensive plan on climate change and energy, Powering the Nation. A whole range of detail. Fully costed out there for all to see. 604,000 new jobs by 2030. A reduction of 43 per cent by 2030. It will result in $52 billion of private sector investment. Our plan for 465,000 fee-free TAFE places. Our plan for child care support.
 
SALES: Let's drill down into this though. Say aged care that you raised first, and those essential things which we know have to be done. That all costs money. So, is it going to be subsidised by the Government or will you expect say, for example, aged care providers to dig into their own profits to provide better meals?
 
ALBANESE: Well, the cost is $2.5 billion, over the forward estimates.
 
SALES: Does that cover all of that? Is that all covered?
 
ALBANESE: Yes, it's fully costed. Like all of our policies. Fully costed with all the detail out there, Leigh.
 
SALES: How do you know that the aged care sector won't pocket any of that? Laura Tingle was raising that issue when she was speaking earlier.
 
ALBANESE: By making the fifth point of our plan is about regulation. Making sure there is transparency and power so that every dollar that goes in, there will need to be detail and transparent information about what that money is being spent on, including things like food and care. At the moment there's a problem with a lack of proper regulation. Now, aged care facilities, many of them are operating really well. They are caring for their residents, but there is enormous pressure on the system. And the Aged Care Royal Commission came out with an interim report with one word title – Neglect. And from this Government, in spite of the fact they had years to respond, including that interim report was two years ago, what we haven't had is anything serious done about workforce issues. And if you don't fix workforce issues, if you don't fix the issue of getting nurses back into nursing homes, increased time for carers, increased pay for aged care workers, then you won't solve the crisis in aged care.
 
SALES: Something else you emphasised in your speech was the need for wage rises across the board, not just aged care. But there was no detail about how you are going to do that.
 
ALBANESE: Because I had half an hour, Leigh. If I could have three hours, I would go through the lot. We announced our policy for more secure work in January last year, almost 18 months ago.
 
SALES: Secure work is not the same as wages. How are you going to get everyone a pay rise?
 
ALBANESE: Part of that, Leigh, we had a range of detailed policies out there. Making secure work is one of the objectives of the Fair Work Act. Having same job, same pay. I've got a Private Member's Bill before the Parliament for same job, same pay. Getting proper definitions of casualisation. Making wage theft a crime. All of these issues going together, as well as 10 days of paid domestic and family violence leave, are the measures to close the gender pay gap that's there. Support for feminised industries, in particular, to have fair work cases put forward, just as last time we were in office, we fixed some of the pay for social and community service workers. But aged care workers and child care workers and many of those industries that are dominated by women simply have wages that aren't high enough. It's not good enough to say we pay tribute to the heroes of the pandemic, but we won't do anything after the pandemic to lift your wages.
 
SALES: So, should we judge your prime ministership, if you are elected, on whether we all get a pay rise during the next two years?
 
ALBANESE: Well, with respect, I'm not so concerned about all of us, in terms of you or me. What I'm concerned about is vulnerable workers getting a pay rise.
 
SALES: And should they judge you on that?
 
ALBANESE: I certainly am prepared to be judged on whether aged care workers get a pay rise. Absolutely.
 
SALES: What about builders, teachers, across the board I'm talking. People who work in their own small businesses.
 
ALBANESE: Well, people who work in small businesses by themselves, if they are small businesses working for themselves, then they are not employees. But what we should do, what we need to do, is to have real wage growth. What we have seen in the current year, real wages will go backwards by $1,355. This year. For the average worker. And that follows a further cut last year and it follows in future years, again, wages simply haven't been keeping up with the cost of living. Australians out there know that that's the case. And as I said tonight, it is a design feature of the economic architecture, according to Government itself. They are quite proud of the fact that they have held back wages. Workers aren't getting a share of the productivity increases that are occurring, as small as they are.
 
SALES: I want to put to you a remark that a voter in Brisbane made to me recently. He's not in politics or the media, it's just a business operator that I met randomly. I asked how he was feeling about the election and he said, ‘Look, the country got through COVID better than just about anywhere in the word, we had so many fewer deaths and JobKeeper kept my business afloat. Actually, I've done better in the past couple of years. So, why would I change?’ What's your answer to that man?
 
ALBANESE: He wouldn't have got JobKeeper if Labor hadn't had argued so strongly for wage subsidies along with employers and unions. The Government said it was a dangerous idea when it was first raised. And whilst the pandemic has shown the strength of Australian society, it's also shown some of the vulnerabilities in our economy. And what we need to do is to be more self-reliant. We need to recognise that we need to make more things here. We need to recognise the opportunity that is there to grow new industries, to grow the economy. We need to address issues like skills shortage by having proper plans for the labour market. We will do that through Jobs and Skills Australia. We will invest in infrastructure not on the basis of colour-coded sheets, but on the basis of growing the economy, boosting productivity.
 
SALES: Well on that point, can I ask you to about infrastructure. The Auditor-General pointed out both major parties have a track record to providing grants to places and projects politically convenient. Will you set up some kind of independent body that can decide which projects deserve funding outside of the party political system?
 
ALBANESE: There is an idea, Leigh. Infrastructure Australia. I did it. As the first ever Infrastructure Minister this nation has had. An independent body chaired by Sir Rod Eddington with serious people, like Kerry Schott and Ken Henry, advising about projects and what needed funding. And of the 17 priority projects that were identified by Infrastructure Australia, every single one of them was funded. And today, people can drive on the Majura Parkway or the Hunter Expressway, they can ride on the Regional Rail Link. They can use the fibre-based National Broadband Network before this Government trashed it. That is a direct result of a depoliticisation and breaking the nexus between the short-term territory political cycle and long-term infrastructure investment cycle.
 
SALES: Can you give us a guarantee that an Anthony Albanese Labor Government won’t be providing grants to seats it wants to win or seats that it already holds?
 
ALBANESE: Well, we did it. You don't have to theorise about this. We did it. We invested in projects based upon the independent advice of Infrastructure Australia. It is a body that we took seriously. We worked with the business community. We worked with people in terms of different levels of government, states and territories. We also worked on economic reform through that body. We reduced the number of transport regulators from 23 down to 3, boosted the national economy by $30 billion over 20 years. We rebuilt one-third of the Interstate Rail Freight Network. We invested, in areas like take the Pacific Highway, Leigh, we invested $7.6 billion compared with 1.3 under the Howard Government 12 years ago, just about every inch of that highway was held by the National Party. It didn't worry us. It was about productivity. It was about safety. It was about nation-building. And that is my record. That was my record as an Infrastructure Minister. And it will be my record as Prime Minister if I'm elected in May.
 
SALES: Anthony Albanese, we will be talking to you again in coming weeks during the campaign. Thank you very much.
 
ALBANESE: I hope so, Leigh.
 
ENDS