SUBJECTS: Vaccination mandates; Federal election; lack of trust in Scott Morrison and his Government; last sitting fortnight of Parliament for the year; Scott Morrison’s Hawaii holiday; need for a national anti-corruption commission.
 
MICHAEL ROWLAND, HOST: Rebel Coalition senators yesterday crossed the floor because of their opposition to state-based vaccine mandates, then Scott Morrison was forced to clarify exactly what he said to Opposition Leader, Anthony Albanese, as the Prime Minister jetted off on his ill-fated 2019 Hawaiian holiday. Anthony Albanese joins us now. Mr Albanese, good morning to you.
 
ANTHONY ALBANESE, LEADER OF THE AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY: Good morning, Michael. Thanks for having me on the program again.
 
ROWLAND: I want to start with the vaccine mandate issue. Reports this morning, in fact, he has now confirmed, George Christensen, LNP member of the Lower House, has threatened to cross the floor unless the Federal Government overturns the state-based vaccine mandates. What do you make of that development?
 
ALBANESE: I just think this is a Prime Minister who can't control his own Party room, let alone capable of governing us into the future in the way that we need. If you can't govern your Party, how can you govern the country?
 
ROWLAND: Do you back the Prime Minister when he says, okay, taking aged care aside and the health sector more broadly, that it is really up to businesses what they do in terms of enforcing vaccine mandates and vaccine rules?
 
ALBANESE: Well, the Prime Minister is all over the shop. He is trying to give different messages to different constituencies. And that's why there is confusion out there. What we need in this country is leadership, is clarity, is direction. And that's what we've seen, Australians take up, Australians have been magnificent in their response to this pandemic. They have made sacrifices. And they deserve better than a Prime Minister who urges people to have the right to go into a coffee shop in Brisbane and get a cup of coffee without showing a vaccination certificate, as required by the health orders, and pretends that in his hometown of Sydney, that's not the case also. The truth is that state and territory governments around the country, Labor and Liberal, have put in place restrictions based upon the health orders in order to keep their citizens safe. Gladys Berejiklian, the New South Wales Government, was the first to do so. I was able to go into a coffee shop on Sunday. I was able to go into a pub on Thursday. I showed my certificate, as other patrons were doing so, and those businesses are coming back to life. I was in Melbourne last week, the same thing is occurring. The Prime Minister needs to stop trying to give different messages because it's creating confusion out there.
 
ROWLAND: I want to talk about the back and forth about the Hawaiian holiday. In Parliament yesterday, when the Prime Minister told you in Question Time, and I'm quoting Scott Morrison directly, ‘I texted him’, that's you, ‘from the plane on that leave and told him where I was going, and he was fully aware of where I was travelling with my family’. Did you know straightaway that was not the truth?
 
ALBANESE: Yes, because it was a lie. I didn't know where he was. The Prime Minister sent me a text message on the Sunday night. You’d be aware, Michael, that over the subsequent days, there was a question mark over whether the Prime Minister was on leave, over who the Acting Prime Minister was, whether Michael McCormack was acting or not, and the media were chasing clear answers. I kept that text message, which was a private message from his phone to my phone, private. Because that's what you do, whether it's between Australian political leaders, or whether it was a message from a foreign leader. The truth is that I kept that information that he had given me of a private nature. He chose to go onto 2GB radio live from Hawaii and say that he texted me. That was a matter for him. I confirmed that was the case, but I didn't release the text message. I, of course, knew that he was on leave. But I didn't know that he was in Hawaii. And the extraordinary thing is that he then went into the Parliament and said, ‘Of course I didn't tell him I was in Hawaii where I had gone. Why would I? That was a private matter.’ Well, first he told Parliament something that wasn't true. I gave a personal explanation and said it wasn't true. He stood up and backed it in again. He doubled down and said what he was referring to, and then had to go into Parliament, waited until I had left the chamber and the Speaker had left the chamber, and then added to an answer an hour after Question Time after we had all given speeches about the retiring Speaker Tony Smith. This Prime Minister has a problem with just telling the truth. And it is a real problem for the nation.
 
ROWLAND: That aside, in your view, did he, in that first answer, mislead Parliament?
 
ALBANESE: Absolutely, he misled Parliament. Quite clearly, he misled Parliament. There is no question that he did. And not only that, he doubled down after I gave a personal explanation pointing that out.
 
ROWLAND: Okay. I want to finish up again by going to the legislative agenda problem the Government is facing with senators crossing the floor. One of the bits of legislation that might be introduced later in the week is legislation setting up an integrity commission. I know the Labor Party isn't happy with what we have learnt about it so far, but if it came to it, would you support legislation setting up an anti-corruption body, something better than nothing?
 
ALBANESE: Well, this Government seriously have been in office now towards the end of their third term. We are in the pre-caretaker election period now, according to the Prime Minister. He is the one who decided to go on election campaign footing over the last fortnight. And now we have, on the brink of the end of a period whereby they are shooting for a second decade in office at the next election, now they've gone back to their list and all things they said they would do, they haven't done. We haven't any draft of legislation. None has been introduced. It was promised more than a thousand days ago in 2018. This Government doesn't take anti-corruption seriously because they've got so many problems of their own with regard to the Leppington Triangle land deal, Sports Rorts, commuter car park rorts, the behaviour of Christian Porter with the so-called blind trust up to $1 million where we don't know who the donors are. There are so many issues that this government has had to deal with. And that's before we get to Angus Taylor and the infamous incident involving the Sydney Lord Mayor and documents that were proven not to be true and we still don't know how that happened. We actually do need to restore faith in politics. And that requires a serious national anti-corruption commission with the ongoing powers of a Royal Commission that can act independently.
 
ROWLAND: Anthony Albanese, thanks for joining us this morning.
 
ALBANESE: Thanks very much, Michael.
 
ENDS