SUBJECTS: Labor’s $300 vaccine incentive proposal; vaccine rollout; need for national quarantine facilities.

JOSH SZEPS, HOST: You will have heard in the news that the Federal Opposition wants a $300 cash incentive to boost the country's COVID-19 vaccination rate. The Federal Government wants 70 per cent of the adult population vaccinated as soon as possible. You will have heard the Premier saying, ‘look, if we can even just get to 50 per cent then that'll give the state government more options at the end of the month, in terms of the lockdown’. Would 300 bucks per vaccinated person help? The Labor Leader Anthony Albanese joins us this morning. G'day Mr. Albanese.

ANTHONY ALBANESE, LEADER OF THE AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY: Hi, good morning, Josh. 

SZEPS: What are you proposing? 

ALBANESE: We're proposing a $300 payment to every person who's fully vaccinated by 1 December. That would be retrospective so that would provide the reward for the people who've already got their vaccines. But we know that the Chief Medical Officer earlier this year said, I think, we really need to look for incentives, as many incentives as we can, for people to become vaccinated. This is just one element. It's not just the cash payment, which of course would assist small businesses and workers who are doing it tough, particularly in Greater Sydney at the moment. But, it also would help with conversations around communities to lift vaccination rates. And in terms of the costs, compared with the cost of lockdown that are currently costing around about $2 billion a week when you have these large lockdowns across states. We need to get more people vaccinated as quickly as possible and this is a constructive suggestion that Labor is putting forward.

SZEPS: Is the problem with the vaccine rollout that people aren't willing to give vaccines at the moment?

ALBANESE: Well, the first problem has been supply and the Government stuffed that up. They had two jobs this year: the supply of vaccines and national purpose-built quarantine facilities. Both of them were botched, but now we're in this circumstance, we need to make sure we step up the vaccination rates. We're running last in the developed world and we need to do everything we can. Other countries have provided incentives, cash incentives and others forms of incentives, in order to encourage people to be vaccinated. This is just one element and it would have a bonus in that we need economic stimulus. Our economy's really struggling. And people, overwhelmingly, who receive this payment prior to Christmas, would spend it helping to support jobs in their local communities as well.

SZEPS: Mr Albanese, on the front page of the Financial Review yesterday, they were citing some research saying that it shouldn't be too hard to get Australians to get to about 70 per cent, that somewhere between 70 and 80 per cent, the modelling suggests, that it's going to become tricky because you're going to have maybe 10 per cent of the of the population who are anti-vaxxers and who are just never going to get vaccinated. But we're currently sitting at about 15 to 16 per cent of the population fully vaccinated in Australia. The Daily Tele this morning has us at number 78 on the vaccine rollout leaderboard globally. The distance between the 15 per cent and the seventy per cent that the epidemiologists think we're going to get to fairly easily. The problem there is not that people don't want to get vaccinated.

ALBANESE: Of course, it's not. It's been supply. 

SZEPS: So what's three hundred bucks gonna do? 

ALBANESE: It's been supply but supply is coming, and we know that getting up above that 70 per cent is going to be difficult but we need to use every tool at our disposal. The fact is that people in my local electorate have been logging on trying to get appointments and have been unable to, to this point.

SZEPS: But we are going to. This seems like a mixed message and with all due respect, it seems like you're saying the vaccine rollout has been stuffed up and people can't get vaccines and on the other hand, we're sort of going to imply that it's their fault by giving them $300 to do something that our government has failed to enable them to do? 

ALBANESE: No, we're not doing that at all. We've made it very clear that the Government has botched the rollout of the vaccine. Australians know that. What it will do is provide incentives as supply comes online, and we know that we will have more Pfizer delivered, we know that there is AstraZeneca available, we know that we will be getting Moderna in the last half of this year, and we know that the supply will be increasing. And one of the things we need to do, as well, is to bring people who are frustrated, I get their frustration. I have spoken to so many of my constituents who have been desperate to get a vaccine and unable to get one. What we want to make sure is that they don't give up, that as the supplies become available, they go out and get vaccinated, because that's the key to stopping these lockdowns, as well as fixing national quarantine. We're not saying this is the be all and end all, we are saying, though, that we need to do everything we can, use every tool at our disposal and at the same time, economic stimulus is needed to protect jobs between now and the end of the year.

SZEPS: And for the vast majority of Australians, the main incentive to get vaccinated is some combination of wanting to get out of lockdown, wanting us to return to some sort of normality, wanting the international border to be able to work to be opened, and of course, on a personal level, wanting to be protected from the possibility of serious illness and death, which is the main thing that the vaccines do. Do you have a sense of what proportion of Australians, you think, are likely to be motivated primarily by a $300 bonus?

ALBANESE: Well, overwhelmingly, Australians have been motivated by doing the right thing, overwhelmingly. But what this will do is just provide an encouragement, which is there, and a reward, if you like, for people who are doing the right thing. And there is no downside to this. We know that the September quarter is likely to be a negative quarter in terms of our economy. We know that small businesses are really struggling. And what small businesses, when I've had my zoom meetings in the last weeks with my electorate, have been telling me, is that, whereas last year when there was increased stimulus in the economy, people were booking more things online, getting more deliveries, getting more pickups, and that has really dropped off, and that small businesses are really struggling. So, this is good for our economy, as well as being an incentive for people to look after, not just their own health, but to look after the health of their families and their communities.

SZEPS: And lastly, Mr. Albanese should there be a stick as well as a carrot, the $300 I mean, as you know, cynics will say that this is a cheap vote grabbing exercise to try to give people $300. 

ALBANESE: We’re saying the government should do it. By the way, we're not the government at the moment so it's a very odd carrot where we're saying you're wargame and willing to get the votes from giving people 300 bucks. Well, we encourage wage subsidies last year which he said was a dangerous idea when we first proposed it. JobKeeper kept people in work. Thank goodness, we did propose it with the support of the business community and the union movement, and eventually, only when the queues formed outside Centrelink, the government got on board and it's a good thing they did.

SZEPS: And Mr. Albanese, one of the other things that people talk about is adding sticks in addition to carrots, like having a vaccine passport type situation where you can't go to, you know, movie theatres or sporting events and that sort of thing, without a vaccine passport. Do you back that?

ALBANESE: Sticks will be inevitable, if you like. People will make those decisions who won't be able to travel overseas and individual businesses will make determinations based upon keeping their own clients and customers safe. That will occur.

SZEPS: I appreciate your time. Great to talk to you.

ALBANESE: Thank you very much. You too. 

SZEPS: That's Anthony Albanese, the Leader of the Labor Party, about offering cash payments to get vaccinated $300.

ENDS