SUBJECTS: Federal election; Government not being able to accept responsibility; Scott Morrison always being too little, too late; COVID outbreaks around Australia; lockdowns; vaccine rollout; need for national quarantine facilities; Labor’s $300 vaccination incentive; Labor’s policy agenda; Labor’s Cheaper Child Care policy; National Reconstruction Fund; Rewiring the Nation; women’s safety at work; manufacturing in Australia; climate change; net zero by 2050; Afghanistan.

PHIL ACKMAN, HOST: Their poll numbers are in the soup. Support from women well down. The vaccine rollout described by many as a fiasco. And a Federal election looming before next winter. Have the wheels fallen off the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, and the Government he leads? This is Phil Ackman Current Affairs. And with me today, Federal Opposition Leader, Anthony Albanese, the man who might be Australia's next Prime Minister. Mr Albanese, do you believe Scott Morrison's Government is now in terminal decline?

ANTHONY ALBANESE, LEADER OF THE LABOR PARTY: Well, that will be a judgment for the Australian people at the next election. But what is clear is that they don't have a capacity to accept responsibility for governing today, whether it's the bushfire response at the beginning of 2020, whether it be the rollout of the vaccine, national quarantine, the response to women's issues, including the reported sexual assault that occurred just metres from the Prime Minister's office, whether it be a plan for the economy and future job creation, including climate change. This is a Government that doesn't accept responsibility. Always seeks to blame someone else, never responds until a problem is an absolute crisis and then the response is too little and too late. And it's clear that they don't have an agenda for the future either, in terms of imagining a better Australia and a path to create it.

ACKMAN: So let's just go backwards for a second. So there are two possibilities with respect to the current Government and what you're saying about their inability to accept responsibility. And the first one is, I suppose, just the natural reaction, 'Not my fault', which all of us in our private lives might succumb to from time to time. The other possibility is that it's a deliberate policy decision not to ever accept responsibility. And presumably, that turns on some cold-blooded calculation that the benefits of accepting responsibility just aren't there. What's your explanation for that?

ALBANESE: Well, I think it's probably a mix of both. The character of the current Prime Minister, who has a history of hiding from transparency and scrutiny, not answering questions. He'll defer questions often by saying things like, 'Oh, that's just gossip', or, 'That's just in the bubble', and avoid giving direct answers as a result of that. But also, clearly, with regard to the current crisis in Australia, the Federal Government had responsibility for three things - the COVIDSafe app, which we know has been quite farcical, has barely been used, the rollout of the vaccine, where we know the Government had not secured enough vaccines early enough here in Australia and then put together an effective plan to roll out the vaccine to get it to people so that people who were in category 1A were supposed to be in the absolute priority, aged care residents, disability care residents, aged care workers, still, many of them remain unvaccinated. And that was supposed to be completed by Easter. This is a Government that continually fail on their responsibilities. So COVIDSafe app, the vaccine rollout, and the third, of course, was purpose-built quarantine facilities. Now, the Queensland Premier put forward a proposition for last October for a purpose-built facility near Toowoomba Airport at Wellcamp. We know that the current outbreak around Australia arose from a breach of hotel quarantine, one of the at least 27. In this case, a limo driver, unvaccinated, without a mask, taking a foreign air crew to a hotel in Sydney. And those three jobs are everything that the Federal Government have had responsibility for. And it hasn't been done successfully. And included in that as well, in addition, of course, it has responsibility for funding and regulation of aged care, which is where most of the deaths have occurred from COVID-19. So the Federal Government has established this so-called national quarantine, where essentially, they hand over responsibility to the states, and then people in Tropical North Queensland will recall that the Prime Minister travelled to Queensland at the end of last year to criticise Premier Palaszczuk during the Queensland election campaign for keeping Queenslanders safe and closing the borders. And we're beginning to see the early stages of, again, ramping up criticism of state governments around the country in order to avoid accepting responsibility for things that are clearly the responsibility of the Commonwealth.

ACKMAN: Look, it seems to me, just with respect to COVID, that there are two approaches, which I crudely summarise as essentially, 'Let her rip' or 'Lockdown'. And so the two things that are against each other, on the one hand is the health of the economy, and on the other is the health of the population. And what I see is oscillating between those two positions at a political level. Do you really believe the choice exists between the health of the population and the health of the economy? And can you have one without the other?

ALBANESE: No, it doesn't. It's a false dichotomy. And it's one that the Government tried to promote early on in the pandemic, but one which it keeps going back to. The truth is that unless you look after the health of Australians, you will not only have a bad health outcome, you'll have a worse economic outcome as well. And a classic example of that is in Sydney, where the Prime Minister urged Premier Berejiklian to not lock down, to not take measures which were required at that time. And as a result, we've seen an outbreak now spread to southeast Queensland, to Victoria, even to New Zealand, as well as right into Western New South Wales and into the ACT, where I'm speaking to you from. And our national capital remains in lockdown as we speak. And so it's a false dichotomy. These lockdowns are now costing just New South Wales alone more than a billion dollars a week. But we know that has an impact around the country. We have in in Far North Queensland, last time I visited along with Elida Faith, our candidate for Leichhardt, and Senator Nita Green, we were told by the tourism sector of the devastating impact that lockdowns in New South Wales and Victoria are having on the tourism sector and on jobs in Cairns and Port Douglas and in that part of the world. And so it has a massive economic impact as a result of a failure to get on top of the health outbreak.

ACKMAN: I'm Phil Ackman. And I'm talking to Federal Opposition Leader, Anthony Albanese, who might be Australia's next Prime Minister. Mr Albanese, as the leader of any country, I suppose the issues just come at you and it turns on how you managed to handle them. But there are at least three incidents this year that I think caused, at the very least, a frown on the electorate's face. The first one was Scott Morrison's decision to take a vacation in Hawaii at the beginning of the year during the bushfires. The second one was the Brittany Higgins issue in Canberra, where she was alleged to be raped 40 or 50 feet from the Prime Minister's own office and where he told us he wasn't aware of it until just a few months ago. And then the third one is COVID, where his starting position so far as I recall, was that it's not a race and that segued eventually into, 'Now we're going for gold'. How do you see all that?

ALBANESE: Well, it says a lot about what characterises this Government, which is that first they deny that there's a problem, they wait till there's an absolute crisis before they act, and the action is then too little. And the third phase is that they seek to blame someone else. In particular, they seek to blame the premiers, or they seek to blame the Australian people themselves. It's remarkable that on the bushfires, you had 23 former fire chiefs wanting a meeting with the Prime Minister. They couldn't get one. And we had no response from the Commonwealth until a large part of the country was on fire. Secondly, with regard to the Brittany Higgins issue, we have an event that I think characterises everything, which is the Prime Minister has asked the head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, his former Chief of Staff, to look into what his office knew. This is something that occurred in 2019. It's now 2021. It's almost two and a half years after the incident. And what, he can't ask his office? And that report, we still haven't seen from the Head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. It defies credibility to suggest that people knew, his fellow ministers knew, people who work for him knew, people in Parliament House knew, but no one thought that a reported sexual assault against a staff member to a Liberal Minister wasn't relevant enough to raise with the Prime Minister. It's just defies belief. And it is something that characterises this Government. And what worries me about Australia's future, is that if this is how a Government acts in its third term, with such arrogance, complacency and incompetence, given they have no agenda going forward, imagine how bad they'd be in their fourth term. They are just relying upon the rollout of funds in various slush funds, pork barrelling the abuse of taxpayers' money that we've seen, and it's no wonder that we haven't seen a national anti-corruption body established, even though this Government promised one and Scott Morrison promised one way back in 2018.

ACKMAN: So the LNP went to the last Federal election with no policies and they won. The ALP had a wheelbarrow full of policies and lost. How do you explain that?

ALBANESE: Well, I think that we got some things wrong. We have to accept the result of the Australian people. That we had a lot of policy, but perhaps not a clear enough narrative. Now I'm determined to have a clear narrative. A narrative that puts secure work front and centre, the creation of jobs, building back stronger through our National Reconstruction Fund, making sure that Australians are trained for that work through the creation of Jobs and Skills Australia, making sure that we deal with other crisis in terms of standards of living, be it childcare with our affordable childcare policy or be it aged care by making sure that there are actually nurses in nursing homes, making sure that the workforce throughout the aged care sector is appropriate. Making sure as well that we deal with the challenge of climate change. These are all challenges going forward, but one in which Labor is outlining a clear alternative to the Government. One, as well, that speaks about the need to create wealth, as well as its distribution. One that lists living standards. We have a Government that has presided over a trillion dollars of debt that has been created, and has no legacy to show for it. And I think that time is up for this Government because they don't have a plan for the future. Labor has a plan for a future Australia which sees us growing, which sees living standards rising, which sees greater opportunity for all across the whole country, but particularly in our regions, which is where we see the challenge of climate change as being an opportunity as well as a threat. An opportunity to benefit through jobs growth by dealing with the shift to a clean energy economy that is required.

ACKMAN: Well, just going to the vision thing. I mean, it fails the pub test if you walk into any bar and you ask anybody there to identify Australia's vision, Australia's plan for the future. There's never an answer. I've not seen any evidence that we have any policy ambition, any vision for what Australia might or should be at all. Now, presumably no vision is itself a policy decision. Is the problem that the LNP, and possibly any government, has now so trapped in the middle of endless conflicting views that it's paralysed and incapable of identifying any kind of plan?

ALBANESE: Well, it certainly is for this Coalition. And hence why you have a failure to even adopt a policy like net zero emissions by 2050. Because Barnaby Joyce is the tail that is wagging the dog in terms of the National Party. And so they are inert in terms of being incapable of meeting the challenge for the future. But I think it is very possible to, and indeed necessary, for us to use the pandemic to build back stronger, to imagine a better Australia. One that's fairer, one that creates opportunity, one that sees new industries being created with good quality, high paying jobs. One that sees Australians in our regions get their fair share from the economy. One that looks for a sustainable environment, including tackling the issue of climate change. One that values the role of women in our society and recognises that every woman should feel safe going to work. One that recognises issues such as domestic violence and the need to overcome those issues as a society. And one in which government provides leadership on those issues. I think that the pandemic presents a once-in-a-century opportunity to imagine a better Australia and then put in place policies that create that better Australia.

ACKMAN: I'm Phil Ackman. And I'm talking to Federal Opposition Leader, Anthony Albanese, who might be Australia's next Prime Minister. Mr Albanese, one of the issues that is a focus for you is productivity and increasing productivity in Australia. But isn't productivity mostly just code for the implementation of more and more technology, which in turn is just code for fewer and fewer workers? Is that how it works?

ALBANESE: Not at all. Take our plan for childcare. What that's about is boosting productivity by boosting women's workforce participation. At the moment, the way the childcare system works is that for many women, working a fourth or fifth day means they actually lose money rather than gain money. The system works against productivity in the workplaces. And that means it is one of the things that's responsible for the 30 per cent gender pay gap that still exists in Australia. Now, if you increase women's workforce participation, what you will do is boost productivity for individual companies as well as boosting the living standards of families with children. Now, that is one example of how you boost productivity in a constructive way. Another way is, to give a practical example, our Rewiring the Nation plan, which is about fixing the transmission of our energy grid. That needs to be updated for the 21st century. At the moment, it's not. And so renewables can't fit into the grid and provide that stability because of problems with transmission. Now, if you fix transmission, you will lower energy prices, you'll make the energy grid run much more efficiently, you'll reduce the need for new capital investment and you'll boost productivity. This is a low-hanging fruit which is there. If you also boost productivity by investing in new industries and new companies, you will have major benefit so that, whether that be existing industries or ones that were sent offshore such as rail manufacturing in Australia, now with trains in Queensland, they're being built in Maryborough and other places by Labor governments around the country. That has a major impact. As does plans for, for example, producing solar panels. Last time I was in Cairns, we went to a factory there, a manufacturing plant that's manufacturing solar batteries and other energy equipment right there in Cairns. That boosts productivity because you're not sending off the raw materials offshore and then making them and then importing them back. You're actually making them here in Australia. I want to see more things made in Australia. So the productivity agenda is one that's about boosting living standards, creating more jobs, if we get it right. But it won't be got right if you just sit back and think that it's okay to build everything overseas and to just export our raw materials and then import them back at greater value, which seems to be the LNP's agenda.

ACKMAN: Well, the cruellest cartoon assessment of Australia's economy is that we export rocks to China and make each other cups of coffee. Is that terribly far from the mark?

ALBANESE: Well, we do have the potential to do so much more. And we should be doing more here in Australia. And there's great success stories. Take a Queensland business that's a huge success story, Tritium, making the fastest electric vehicle charging stations in the world and exporting them to Europe and North America, using Australian technology. Australians have always been good at innovation and science and research. What we haven't been good at is commercialising those opportunities. My vision for Australia is one in which we do just that. And Australians and Australian jobs will benefit.

ACKMAN: So we're almost out of time. But just a couple of things. How do you think the next few months play out before the inevitable Federal election?

ALBANESE: Well, I certainly hope that the numbers come down in terms of the COVID outbreaks. We've seen the disaster that is New South Wales playing out at the moment with the record numbers of COVID infections and the consequences for not just the New South Wales economy but the national economy as well. I think how it plays out is that the Federal Government will continue to try to shift blame. We've seen a bit of that over last weekend. And there'll be an interesting National Cabinet meeting this week, whereby there's an attempt to go back and shift what the Doherty Institute gave as advice to that National Cabinet process. But we'll continue to argue, along with the Queensland Government, that we need to keep Australians safe, get the health outcomes right, and that's a way to get better economic outcomes. But we'll see how that plays out. I think that the Government will continue to not act soon enough. And we've seen that with tragic consequences being played out in Afghanistan, whereby the Government removed our embassy officials in May but left stranded so many people who provided assistance to Australia on the ground. People who we had a moral obligation to assist but, as well, we had a national security obligation to assist. We need to send the message to the world that if you help Australia, we will help you in your time of need. So these issues will play out. There's no doubt that COVID will continue to dominate political discussion. But I think it is the way that the COVID response is so similar to every other response that this Government has, whether it be the longer-term issues like dealing with the challenge of climate change, immediate crisis such as bushfires, the need to ensure women's safety at work is a priority, the rollout of the vaccine, national quarantine, they all have this common theme. Which is that this Government acts too little, too late. I wouldn't be surprised if there's attempted wedges and scare campaigns from this Government. That would be true to form. But we'll continue to be constructive. We'll continue to put forward practical ideas like our $300 cash payment for people who are fully vaccinated, in order to provide both a reward and an incentive, and we'll continue to hold the Government to account. We're ready for the election, whenever it is. It looks like it won't be this year now. It will be in March or May next year. But we'll continue to prepare constructive and positive plans so that we do have a better plan going forward for the country, one that I think the country needs.

ACKMAN: Finally, we're running out of time, any message specifically for the people of Cairns, Port Douglas and Far North Queensland?

ALBANESE: Well, the first message for people of Cairns and Port Douglas is stay safe. COVID is not gone. We need to make sure that we continue to look after each other. The Government failed on the vaccine rollout and quarantine. And that has had consequences for jobs and the economy in Far North Queensland. But we will get through this. We'll get through this together. And we will set about creating a positive vision and a positive plan for a more equal and a fairer Australia.

ACKMAN: Thank you. I'm Phil Ackman, and I've been talking to the Federal Opposition Leader, Anthony Albanese. Mr Albanese, thank you for talking to us today. And there are so many other topics I'd like to come back to you at some stage in the future and talk about. China and lots of other issues that are of great concern at the moment. Thank you for today, sir. 

ALBANESE: Thanks very much. My pleasure.

ENDS