SUBJECTS: Greens Party; Callide Power Station; Resources kicked out of the Cabinet; vaccine rollout; national quarantine; Morrison Government failing Australians during a health pandemic; confusion over Morrison Government’s vaccine messaging.
 
PAUL CULLIVER, HOST: Good to have you on the radio this morning. 

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

CULLIVER: Can I first talk about something that's been making the rounds in the last few days, which is Adam Bandt proposing a pairing agreement with you? Of course, he's Leader of the Greens. Would you go for it?

ALBANESE: No.

CULLIVER: Would you ever form a minority government with support with the Greens in the lower house? 

ALBANESE: No.

CULLIVER: Julia Gillard did it 11 years ago, why wouldn't you do it today?

ALBANESE: Well, I was actually, of course, Deputy Prime Minister in 2013. And at that point, it was a minority government with just 70 members of the House of Representatives. And we made our view clear then, myself and Kevin Rudd, that people did have a choice. They could have had, at that time, Tony Abbott could have been installed as Prime Minister, that was a choice that they would face. And, of course, we continued to govern until the election, and we weren't successful. But that indicated my views, which is that Labor should govern in our own right. We're a party of government. And we're not a party of a Coalition with Bob Katter or with Helen Haines or with Zali Steggall or any of the other single people who are there in the Parliament. I saw this as an attempt, really, to just get some attention from Adam Bandt, which is fair enough, that is his objective to get attention, but I didn't see it as being particularly relevant. 

CULLIVER: Okay, can I get to some local issues? Of course, we have had the Callide Power Station just over a month ago, one of the generating units exploded. There's been commitments from CS Energy and InterGen to rebuild that. Do you see that as akin to building new coal-fired power in the state?

ALBANESE: No, not at all. It's appropriate that when there's an incident like that, there'd be repair. What I've said is that there won't be a new coal-fired power station built anywhere in Australia, because there hasn't been for more than a decade. If it was going to happen, it would have happened during this century. And it hasn't. And that is because the market is speaking about where the economics are for new power generation. And that's just a fact. And I think it is unfortunate that the Coalition have been prepared, or some have been prepared, to mislead people through the granting of taxpayers' money for a feasibility study in Collinsville for a project that everyone knows, including members of the Government, is not going to go ahead.

CULLIVER: There were 400,000-500,000 people that lost power when Callide Power Station went offline. Given that, the calls have been that indeed, coal is a massively important part of the Queensland grid. How can you guarantee reliability into the future without coal-fired power?

ALBANESE: Well, of course, that's exactly why you need to repair this power station. Coal-fired power continues to play a role. But as does gas, as do renewables, increasingly with battery storage. And what we're seeing is a transition in the energy sector here in Australia. That doesn't happen overnight. And coal continues to play an important role in power, not just in Queensland, but certainly in my home state of New South Wales and other parts of the country. But what we are seeing is that when coal-fired power stations have closed, and are closing, then they haven't been replaced by new coal-fired power, they've been replaced by a mix of other sources, including gas and renewables.

CULLIVER: You've committed to put the Resource portfolio back into the ministry, which of course, is something that's changed under the Barnaby Joyce reshuffle. Why is that important to have it in the ministry? Is that something you think voters actually care about?

ALBANESE: Well, there is around-about $310 billion is what the resources sector is worth to Australia. A million Australians depend upon the resources sector for their jobs, either directly or indirectly. So I think Australians care about whether the Federal Government is looking at the resources sector as an important one or not. And if it's not in the Cabinet, then that's a sign that it's not worthy of being around the Cabinet table when discussions are taking place, not just about issues directly related to the Resources portfolio, but because the resources sector interacts with infrastructure, with transport, with the environment, with regional development, with the economy, with employment. It's quite extraordinary that a Government that has pretended that it cares about this issue has been prepared to remove it from the Cabinet. Just like it's removed the Water portfolio, and Local Government doesn't have a ministry at all. It just has an Assistant Minister, which used to be called parliamentary secretaries. I find this reshuffle based upon Barnaby Joyce's numbers list, of who was voting for who, to be not the way that the country should be run.

CULLIVER: Just Finally, Queenslanders are pretty confused this morning over whether under 40s should get the AstraZeneca vaccine. The Chief Health Officer of Queensland Dr Young says she doesn't want to see under 40s get AstraZeneca. Meanwhile, of course, the Federal Government, Scott Morrison, the Prime Minister, said that it is now available if you want to seek that as an under 40. Should under 40s seek the AstraZeneca vaccine?

ALBANESE: I think politicians shouldn't give health advice and that we should be listening to the health experts. And that was what has been happening during this pandemic right up until Monday night. And I heard the head of ATAGI earlier this morning, on your station it will be heard in a little while, on the AM program, give his advice. The ATAGI is, of course, the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation, all of the health experts from around the country. And we should be listening to them. It's very important that up until this point, we haven't had a politicisation of these issues. We've just done the right thing based upon the health advice. And I think it's really unfortunate that you had a meeting of the National Cabinet on Monday, where there wasn't a change to the advice from the National Cabinet, there wasn't even a discussion of these issues. And then it was raised in late-night press conference. And that has led to a debate that is causing a great deal of confusion. The problem here is we have 4.7 per cent of Australians fully vaccinated. We're dead last in the OECD for rolling out this vaccine. And I just think that the Prime Minister had two jobs this year. To roll out the vaccine and to fix national quarantine. And unfortunately, neither of those things has happened effectively.

CULLIVER: Anthony Albanese, good to talk to you.

ALBANESE: Thanks very much.

ENDS