SUBJECTS: Passing of Kimberley Kitching; East Coast floods; national security: Australia’s relationship with China.   

JAMES GLENDAY, HOST: Australian political circles are in shock after the sudden death of Labor Senator, Kimberley Kitching. The 52-year-old had a suspected heart attack while driving her car between meetings yesterday. The Opposition Leader, Anthony Albanese, is in Lismore this morning. And he joins us now. Mr Albanese, good morning. Firstly, can I ask how are you feeling after hearing this news?

ANTHONY ALBANESE, LEADER OF THE AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY: It was an enormous shock, James. I was visiting a family in Ballina yesterday who have lost everything. And I got an urgent message and then I took a call. And it is something that was just totally unexpected. Kimberley was just 52 years of age. She was just beginning her political career. It was her first term serving in the Senate. I appointed her to the frontbench and gave her additional responsibilities when I became the Leader and Kimberley was someone who lit up a room when she was there. She was so full of life. She was a vivacious character and to lose her so young is just an enormous shock.

GLENDAY: It is very sad news. Senator Kitching's friends say she had been under a lot of stress because of a dispute over her pre-selection. She had spoken about that privately. Were you aware of the pressures she was under?

ALBANESE: Politics is a difficult business. There are pressures on people in politics. And that is part of what we do. But I certainly think that this was totally unexpected. No-one could have anticipated this and people were ringing each other, I think multiple times to get confirmation because it was such a shock. Kimberley looked fit. She had got fitter in recent times. And there was no history of heart condition. And that is why it's such a tremendous shock for the entire Labor family today.

GLENDAY: You are in Lismore this morning and you have been critical of the pace of the response to the flood disaster. The Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, has said the ADF can't be on the beck and call to act immediately. What would you do if you become Prime Minister in May? What would you do differently when faced with a similar situation? 

ALBANESE: Firstly, I would have actually spent money in the Emergency Response Fund which has been sitting there being treated like a term deposit by this Government. We know that in Australia, we have a history of natural disasters, be it floods, bushfires or cyclones. We established a fund that was meant to see $200 million expended every year. And it hasn't been touched. It has grown from $4 billion to $4.8 billion. That is the first point.

Secondly, Lismore here was excluded from funding for projects, for disaster mitigation, in particular flood. This is a flood-prone area. There have been floods in Lismore before, not like this but it has occurred before and it was excluded from the funding.

GLENDAY: Sure. But a lot of the criticism that the Prime Minister has faced, and the Government has faced, is that it didn't seem that people were on the ground to help quickly enough, according to local residents and they had expected that there would be troops.

ALBANESE: Well, they weren't.

GLENDAY: What would you do differently, given that the army has to travel long distances. Should there be a new unit set up and how would you grapple with this similar situation?

ALBANESE: It is not just about the army. That is one factor that the army were brought in slowly. The Prime Minister only declared the national emergency yesterday. This is days and days into this disaster. The Parliament gave the Prime Minister and the Government powers to do that after the experience of the bushfires. That was one of the recommendation. And why is it that it took the Prime Minister to have a visit for that to occur?

Secondly, the people I've spoken to in Ballina yesterday afternoon and last evening remain incredibly concerned that they don't know where to go. There are people - I have spoken to a woman who has lost everything with her family - her kids are staying with friends. Her dad lives by himself, he didn't know there was any support available. He's remaining determined to stay in the house, even though it has been badly effected. We haven't had people on the ground from government services being able to provide people with that support and when people log on, they go through all this bureaucracy of having to find their birth certificate numbers and their passport numbers and put in all this data and still get knocked back, when quite often they have lost all of their paperwork.

What we needed when there is a natural disaster is people on the ground, face to face, providing people with that support, getting the message out there that there is somewhere people can go, there is a single phone call they can make that will provide them with the assistance they need, whether it's support for emergency housing, whether it's financial support as well. That's just not on the ground, even today at this point and it needs to be here and there needs to be a system set up so that when there is a disaster like this, there are people here on the ground straightaway.

GLENDAY: I just want to move onto another topic before I let you go. Yesterday, you spoke about your national security policies. When you were elected to Parliament as a proud member of the Labor Left, could you have ever envisioned that you would be backing massive new defence spending and the acquisition of nuclear powered submarines - essentially yesterday you said ‘Whatever it costs we're going to spend it’?

ALBANESE: The truth is that the first responsibility of every Member of Parliament is to keep people safe. That absolutely was something that I was very conscious of from the first day in the Parliament. It is something that all Australians hold dear. Our national security is the first obligation. And that's something that I have remained committed to. The world has changed in terms of the challenges that have occurred. China has changed its position in this country. Tony Abbott welcomed Xi Jinping to address the Parliament of Australia. And the statements that he made then about the Chinese leadership, I don't think he would make today. That is not a criticism of Tony Abbott when he was Prime Minister, it's just a fact that there have been changes and we live in an insecure world. We're seeing that played out with Russia and Ukraine at the moment, with the outrageous breach of international law and all the norms of behaviour between nation states that has kept the world a safer place in the post-World War II order. We have seen that ripped up by an authoritarian like Vladimir Putin and we need to be conscious about that.

With regard to our equipment, what I say is - I accept the defence advice about the best form of equipment in order to keep us safe, in order to be a deterrent and there is nothing unusual about Labor doing that. Australia turned to John Curtin during World War II. Without an election, he was appointed Prime Minister because the Parliament had confidence that he would keep Australians safe. And it was John Curtin who said at the end of 1941, that Australia looked to America for our safety and for that was a forging of the alliance in our darkest days when we were under threat during that Great War. 

GLENDAY: Mr Albanese, thank you so much for your time. And condolences again about the death of Senator Kitching.

ALBANESE: Thank you, James.

ENDS