SUBJECTS: Labor’s plan to strengthen Medicare; Urgent Care Clinics; the Hunter region; healthcare; labour force figures; housing; Newcastle Airport; Scott Morrison always there for the photo-op but never there for the follow up; federal election; cost of living; Labor’s policy agenda.
 
DAN REPACHOLI, LABOR CANDIDATE FOR HUNTER: Good morning, everyone. I would like to welcome you all here today. I would like to welcome Anthony, Meryl, Pat and Tim Ayres. I would like to thank everyone for coming to this beautiful part of the world, Cessnock. Home of the best wine region in Australia is Cessnock, gateway to the paradise. I would like to thank everyone for coming today. The Johns brothers are from here, Cessnock Goannas are from here. We have everything we need. And we are about to have more. We are about to have one of 50 Medicare Urgent Care Clinics in this area. This is great for all of us. I have a six-year-old and an eight-year-old girl. They play netball here in Cessnock. If they fall over and hurt themselves, or a teammate or competitor, they can get into the clinics, get the care they need without waiting up to 9 hours in emergency areas in hospitals. This will relieve the stress on hospitals. This is great for our area and a fantastic announcement for Cessnock that we will be one of the 50 clinics in our area. I would like to welcome Anthony Albanese to say a few words.
 
ANTHONY ALBANESE, LEADER OF THE AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY: Thanks very much, Dan. It is great to be back in the Hunter again with a candidate who has a big presence in the Hunter, you might have noticed. Just a few days ago he celebrated the fourth anniversary of winning a Commonwealth Games gold medal for Australia. And I think that he is a great candidate for this seat. And it is great to be back here in Cessnock with him again.
 
Today's announcement is an important one. It goes to the heart of one of the big themes that we are running in this campaign. Four big themes all around a better future. A better which has stronger Medicare, more secure work, which makes more things here in Australia, and takes pressure off the cost of living by cheaper child care, cheaper energy prices, but also by reducing the cost of healthcare as well.
 
Yesterday's announcement was just another announcement in our many announcements we are going to make during this campaign on health, including on practical ways in which we can take pressure off emergency departments. We have heard here from the nursing staff, the frontline workers, the heroes, not just of the pandemic but the everyday heroes about the pressure that is on ED in Cessnock. These urgent care centres, which will be located in – there will be a bidding process from existing GP clinics or from community health centres to establish these centres that can provide extended care seven days a week. It is important. It is somewhere in between a visit to your local GP who you develop a relationship with and the acute care that is often required in emergency departments. But what we find is because of the pressure that are on EDs, if one of Dan's lovely daughters that I have had the privilege of meeting does fall over and sprains an ankle playing netball or has an incident that needs care in a timely manner, they are not waiting in ED, they are not clogging up emergency departments. That is why this commitment is very important for 50 of these Urgent Care Centres to be located right around Australia and one of them is clearly needed here in Hunter because of the pressure that we have heard about this morning from frontline workers about the growing population and the pressure that is on the health system. Labor will always prioritise Medicare. Medicare is something that we're very proud of creating, it is something that we will continue to back in.
 
JOURNALIST: Cessnock is a coal mining town. Under your climate policies, businesses will have to buy carbon credits to offset their emissions. Can you guarantee that people, workers in towns like Cessnock and other resources towns around Australia, that none of them will lose their jobs as a result of those policies?
 
ALBANESE: Not only can we guarantee it, our RepuTex modelling guaranteed it. We will have the safeguard mechanism that was established by Tony Abbott as part of the 2015 plan and we will implement that. The good news is, if you actually speak to the companies like BHP, Rio Tinto, Santos and others in the resources sector, they have all adopted net zero by 2050. The safeguard mechanism makes sure there is a pathway to that, to 2050. Our policy will see a creation of jobs. 604,000 new jobs created by 2030, five out of every six in regional Australia.
 
JOURNALIST: When it comes to the rise we are seeing in global inflation, that is going crazy. We are seeing interest rates are tipped to increase multiple times this year. What is your fiscal plan to be able to put downward pressure on rates?
 
ALBANESE: What the Reserve Bank has done, and I support what Philip Lowe has done, they have adjusted the NAIRU and they have adjusted that down to 4.25. They want to see a lift in real wages. When they look at the NAIRU which is about what impact inflation can be without putting upward pressure on prices and inflation, they have resisted pressure to increase interest rates up to this point. They have foreshadowed increases in the future from the 0.1 where they are. That is one of the reasons why we are being very fiscally responsible during this campaign. We are not promising everything that we would like to do because we are making sure that, in terms of fiscal policy, we are being responsible.
 
JOURNALIST: What is your fiscal plan to put downward pressure on rates? What is your actual plan?
 
ALBANESE: The Reserve Bank have said that interest rates will increase, regardless of who is in government. They have foreshadowed that. Our fiscal plan is to make sure we have responsible spending, to make sure that we don't have the sort of waste that we have seen under this Government as well. I note some comments about our expenditure on aged care, for example. Talk to these nurses, some of whom work in aged care about whether it is needed. That is $2.5 billion. That is less than half of the $5.5 billion that the Government spent on subs that didn't lead to anything being built.
 
JOURNALIST: You are going to spend $135 million on these 50 GP clinics. If there is a problem with hospital waiting times, aren't you better off addressing the hospital waiting times than spending money on other clinics that you then have to up-tool and find staff for?
 
ALBANESE: This addresses hospital waiting times. Part of the problem with our hospital system and emergency departments – talk to any of the people in the sector – is people in nursing homes who get transferred by ambulance to an emergency department of a hospital because they have a health issue and there is not a nurse on site, they can't get the care. That is part of the very objective that we have. And the same principle applies to it.
 
JOURNALIST: Going back to Stela's question, does that mean, the forecast Budget deficit for the coming year is about $80 billion, does that mean that you would reduce the deficit more or the same or keep a slightly larger deficit than what is forecast in Budget?
 
ALBANESE: What we will do is e will reduce the waste. And we will have all of our expenditures and all of our revenues, it will all be out there. We have said we have got a measure coming on multinational taxes, so we will have that out there.
 
JOURNALIST: You have spoken a bit about your time working at Pancakes on the Rocks. Outside your time as a Member of Parliament, what is the hardest day of work you have ever had?
 
ALBANESE: There were days at Pancakes on the Rocks which were pretty tough. I worked the Saturday night 11PM-7AM shift on a Sunday morning. At times, there were issues, not surprisingly at 3AM or 4AM in the morning in Pancakes on the Rocks. And it was also one of the difficulties that it was a well-paid job. But to tell the truth, the pancake mix got into your skin and people knew that you had worked for two or three days afterwards that you had been there. It was a tough job but probably the hardest job I had when I was at uni, in terms of a one-off, was a thing that was up on the board there, it was payments to clean one of the wharfs down where the Wharf Theatre and the Sydney Theatre Company there is. They had been abandoned at that time. We had to go in with high-powered hoses. They are really tall roofs. They hadn't been used for a long time. And we basically, I think back on it now, no occupational health and safety, we were hosing off pigeon poo, probably decades old, and it went all over us and it was a dreadful day. We did get paid for it, for three days work. And it was a pretty tough job.
 
JOURNALIST: Following on from Jono’s question, the clinics will require more GPs. Where do they come from? At the moment this policy of paying clinics to hire more is increasing demand for them. But you've acknowledged and are campaigning hard on the fact that is a GP shortage in Australia. Where do they come from?
 
ALBANESE: We will have more to say about GPs and increasing training etc for GPs during the campaign. This is what the head of the College of GPs, Professor Karen Price said about our policy. ‘We have long been calling for support for after-hours access for acute care in general practice. This should take place in suitably resources GP-led clinics. We don't need to reinvent the wheel’. That is precisely who we have listened to on this policy. The Royal College, I have met with them some months ago in my electorate office. We realise there are labour shortages. And we will say more about that. This follows announcements that we have made about GP after-hours, including here in Toronto that I made with Mr Repacholi and Pat Conroy a couple of months ago. So, we will continue to have more to say.
 
JOURNALIST: Your predecessor had a robust relationship with the Leader of the Opposition. If you are elected to Parliament, are you confident that you will be able to continue that legacy of standing up for the Hunter, even on tough issues such as we heard being asked before, about the impact on jobs. There is the Bulga Mine. Are you confident when Mr Albanese says that none of the workers would lose their job if the mine had to buy carbon credits?
 
REPACHOLI: I am confident on that. The export market will make the decision about coal mining's future. It has got many, many years to go. We are here to make sure we continue with safe, secure employment for everyone, so we have good futures for families, cuts down on everything in the area. While people are earning good dollars, they will spend their dollars in our area. We have the best wine region in Australia, the second best tourism area in New South Wales, best resources sector in New South Wales, the best energy sector in New South Wales. We have one of the world's leading horse breeding studs here in our electorate. We have so much to offer here in the Hunter and we will continue to offer that. And a Labor Government will make it stronger.
 
JOURNALIST: I understand you have policies on social and affordable housing. But what would a Labor Government do to address the rising rents so many Australia are facing? And would you consider raising rent assistance?
 
ALBANESE: One of the things that our Housing Australia Future Fund is aimed at is to address some of those issues. Part of the problem we have seen is that you have seen a reduction in Commonwealth direct engagement and involvement in building new social housing. When we were last in office, we built something in the order of 20,000 additional social housing units. But we renovated or refurbished some 80,000. There were a whole lot of homes that were sitting around that weren't liveable or viable. We put money into that. We changed, also, the social experience of people in that public housing. I think about a public housing estate such as the one in Lilyfield in my electorate that was transformed by being renovated away from the old blocks that were up there.
 
JOURNALIST: What about the private market?
 
ALBANESE: One of the ways you take pressure off is by increasing supply of housing and taking off that pressure. I was talking yesterday with a bunch of people in the construction industry, yesterday, after I saw you. And we talked about ways in which we could work together. I had a meeting with some people from the Property Council last week as well. We will continue to engage. We will have more to say on housing, including private housing, including the private market during the campaign.
 
JOURNALIST: The latest unemployment rate will be out later today. And it might even have a three in front of it. Your Shadow Treasurer said in 2020 that the biggest test of this Government will be the management of the recession and its aftermath will be what happens to jobs. Do you concede the Government has passed the test?
 
ALBANESE: I certainly hope it has a three in front of it later today. I want to see the unemployment rate as low as possible.
 
JOURNALIST: Has it passed the test?
 
ALBANESE: I also look at the nature of how people are doing it. I want an economy that works for people, not the other way around. The truth is that the figures have shown, for example, we had a debate about casualisation over the last couple of days. There are half a million people working three jobs or more. Half a million. Think about that. Three jobs or more. That is an increase of 50 per cent since this Government came to office. The truth is that what we need is secure work that provides enough income so that people can feed themselves, pay their rent, get by, have enough money there so if there's a family emergency, they don't think about how they can possibly get by. The truth is that sometimes these big figures that look at the macro level, and remember the definition of employment can be people just working a couple of hours a week, they don't get included in the figure. But that figure of half a million people working three or more jobs is quite an astonishing one. And it continues to grow. We have a growth in insecure work. One of the things I have been talking with Dan about, when we talked about him being a candidate here, he was concerned about more insecure work, less permanency in the mining sector in this community. That is something that is a major issue. Meryl has continued to raise this, and Pat as well. That is why we have a policy of same job, same pay that we will say more about. We want the unemployment rate to be as low as possible. What we also want to look at is what the real impact is on people. And people are really doing it tough.
 
JOURNALIST: The AMA says your urgent clinics will do little to relieve the hospital log jam and will fragment care and unfairly compete with nearby GPs. Is the AMA wrong and why weren't they consulted?
 
ALBANESE: The College of GPs, which is what this is aimed at, have welcomed the
policy, Professor Karen Price, and so have the Grattan Institute.
 
JOURNALIST: The AMA says it is ill thought out and a piecemeal.
 
ALBANESE: It is just one of the policies that we will announce when it comes to GPs. I had a chat with the President of the AMA today. I met with him two weeks ago, in my Parliament House office during Budget. I think it was on the day of my Budget reply. I made time to meet with the President of the AMA. My door is always open to him.
 
JOURNALIST: The criticism you received from the Government, the latest polls, is people don't know who you are or what you stand for. Why do you think that is given you have been in politics for over 20 years?
 
ALBANESE: I am concentrating on putting forward my plan for a better future for Australia. I am making sure that I am out there again with candidates, day after day, as I have been in this region. I think my fourth visit to the region just this year. I began on January 2 here announcing faster high-speed rail here for the Hunter. I made announcements about GP after-hours. Today, this is a practical plan as well. I am very confident that Dan and Meryl and Pat will be re-elected, and Sharon Claydon who is an apology due to a health issue that a few of the team have had recently in this region, will be returned, or in Dan's case, will join the team. And they will be a strong team for the Hunter, which will be part of a strong Labor Government. A strong Labor Government that has a plan for a better future for Australia, strengthening Medicare, with more secure work, cheaper child care and with making more things here.
 
JOURNALIST: The UK Government has overnight announced a five year refugee resettlement deal.
 
ALBANESE: There are two people talking at once.
 
JOURNALIST: The UK Government has announced a five-year refugee resettlement deal with Rwanda and endorsed boat turn backs. If people smugglers seek to take advantage of an incoming Labor Government and send more boats, will you be tough on boat turn backs and will you consider an offshore resettlement deal?
 
ALBANESE: We will turn boats back. Turning boats back means that you don't need offshore detention.
 
JOURNALIST: Fred poked me in the back before and said, ‘What is going to happen with the pension?’ He hasn't had a decent raise in the pension in 10 years. What is your message to Fred and other pensioners who are doing it tough out there with cost of living? What will you do to help Fred?
 
ALBANESE: Fred, who I know from way back, I know Fred very well. Fred is someone who, like a lot of pensioners, will always have a good say. And he is someone who has made a great contribution in his working life. And he deserves respect and dignity in his older years. I will make this point, when Labor was last in office, we gave the biggest increase in pension's history. I will always be sympathetic to pensioners. I grew up in a household where I survived as a child with a mum on invalid pension. I get it. We will always do what we can. I have said in every single budget, every single budget, governments should consider what they can do for people who are doing it tough.
 
JOURNALIST: Newcastle Airport funding this morning from the Coalition, will Labor match that?
 
ALBANESE: Yes, we certainly will. We have done a lot of work on Newcastle Airport over the years. I have been a regular visitor here. And there is someone here who I think, in terms of the big issue, as you would be aware at Newcastle airport – I might ask Meryl if she wants to say something as the local member – that PFAS was the biggest issue facing the community here. Meryl was an extraordinary advocate for her local community. But we will certainly match that commitment. Newcastle Airport is really important. And one of the things that I hope occurs, and we envisaged in the Aviation White Paper I did way back in 2009, was how you could get more regional tourism directly here? I want to see more direct flights internationally to here in the Hunter. Because, as Dan said, there is a lot to offer here. Some of the best wineries in the world. I have to be careful, so I don't say a different thing here from Margaret River. Is anyone here from The Advertiser? There is a photographer. The beautiful Barossa and other regions, McLaren Vale, there is some great wine regions in Australia and in Tasmania. Do you want to comment on airport?
 
MERYL SWANSON, MEMBER FOR PATERSON: Very briefly. Thanks, Albo. I have got my visa from Dan to be here in Cessnock because I am from the neighbouring electorate which kicks off at Neath Beach - that is an in-joke, over to Kurri and Nelson Bay and taking in Williamtown where the Newcastle Airport is based, along with the premier jet facility in Australia, hosting the F-35s. We are going to have 72 F-35s in Australia. And 54 will be based in my seat at RAAF Williamtown. It is the safest airport to land in Australia because you are talked down from the tin pushers in the RAAF. They know what they are doing. We are strengthening the runway. I have fought with current Government to strengthen the runway. We will have a terminal fit to take the big planes. Someone asked about the economy of the Hunter. We need to diversify that economy. We will be able to fly from Newcastle to Singapore, from Newcastle to New Zealand, from Newcastle potentially to the West Coast of America. This is really exciting. Newcastle Airport is taking off literally and metaphorically. 4,500 jobs straightaway. Freight in the belly of the plane, people coming and going to drink Dan's wine. I have a couple of wineries, Dan. Come and have a look at my imports. It will be a dynamic game-changer for our region.
 
ALBANESE: I look forward to the transcript and people looking up that term that Meryl just used.
 
JOURNALIST: You said earlier this week that foreign nurses might be part of the mix for your aged care pledge. Clare O'Neil insists that wasn't the case on Q+A recently. What is actually happening?
 
ALBANESE: I hate to break it to you, but I don't know if you were listening to the accents before. I don't think she is from Cessnock. I will give you the big tip. Foreign nurses. When I was in RPA last year, it was Irish nurses, just about everyone was an Irish nurse. They are a part of our migration system.
 
JOURNALIST: But given Australian nurses, like the ones yesterday, the aged care policy would be filled with Aussie nurses?
 
ALBANESE: The nurses who were there yesterday are ecstatic about the policy. The nurses who were there yesterday are some of the same nurses who I was the first leader of any political party to address a national conference of the Nurses Federation. When they said that to me, I said, ‘Are you sure?’ to Annie Butler, the National Secretary. The truth is that the nurses have historically not been engaged in backing a political party. What happened at that meeting was I heard firsthand from aged care nurse after aged care nurse their issues being raised, including the fact that they wanted 24/7 care.
 
JOURNALIST: Today, the Prime Minister's in Tasmania for a forestry announcement. The Coalition at the last election committed to planting a billion trees by 2030. They have only done about one per cent in that time. What is Labor's position on that issue of the supply chain in the timber industry? And do you think that the Government should come clean about how many trees they actually will be able to plant by 2030?
 
ALBANESE: This is another announcement from a Government that's all announcement and no delivery. He will be there for the photo-op, buthe is never there for the follow-up. Always. This Prime Minister promised a billion trees. How many have they got?
 
JOURNALIST: One per cent.
 
ALBANESE: One per cent, maybe. In 2019, Scott Morrison skated through an election campaign without being held to account. He skated through with photo-ops, making promises, just dismissed. Whether it is this or whether it be yesterday when he walked away from a National Anti-Corruption Commission. Before the last election, indeed in 2018, he said very clearly, when he became Prime Minister, there would be a National Integrity Commission. Yet what he has done is not even introduce the legislation into the Parliament. And yesterday, he made it clear that he wouldn't have a National Integrity Commission during the next term with this rather bizarre statement that the reason was because Labor didn't support his model. The reason why this Prime Minister doesn't want an anti-corruption commission is sitting on his frontbench. That is the delay for why there is no National Integrity Commission. Because a National Integrity Commission would look at the money that was paid for land at Badgerys Creek of $30 million for land that was worth $3 million. It would look at the sports rorts saga. It would look at all of the rorts that have been looked at. It would look at how it is that Angus Taylor – they spent a fair bit of time on Angus, I have got to say – and that is why there is not a National Anti-Corruption Commission. This Prime Minister just makes promises and walks away from them. Similarly, on religious discrimination, the Prime Minister withdrew legislation on wage theft. The Prime Minister had the numbers in both houses and withdrew it from their own legislation. This is a Prime Minister who can't be trusted to deliver on his commitments next term because he has shown this term that he can't be trusted.
 
JOURNALIST: The labour force may well tighten again today. What are you going to do with the skilled migration cap? Will Labor have to increase it in office?
 
ALBANESE: One of the things that we will do is – that's why we're creating Jobs and Skills Australia. And yesterday, I met with people including the head of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. And one of the things we talked about is the skills crisis and also the Head of the Restaurant and Caterers, other industries that need labour. And in the short-term, you will need to import labour across a range of areas. We have a skills crisis in this country. It means that, for example, some restaurants can't open seven days a week or six days a week or whatever their normal pattern is. That is holding the economy back, it is holding back jobs. We need to do something about that. One of the things about Jobs and Skills Australia that we will do is, look at using the Infrastructure Australia model, which is proven to be successful when it was actually listened to, is to have a board, including serious people from the private sector, that look at what are the jobs we need today, but in a year and five or 10 years’ time and make sure that the training occurs for it.
 
JOURNALIST: Will you put a figure on it before the election?
 
ALBANESE: I won't do what this Government does, which is to make announcements about when we are going to make announcements.
 
JOURNALIST: Given so much of the Federal campaigns are about the leaders and their personalities, a recent focus group published today in the AFR said neither you nor Scott Morrison are very impressive, but the least unimpressive is Scott Morrison. And the criticism of you is that you are dull, disinterested and uninspiring. How will you change peoples' perceptions of you?
 
ALBANESE: I am who I am. I will be getting about being me, putting forward my proposition. What people are interested in is who has a plan for Australia's future. I have a plan for the future, a plan for more secure work, a plan to strengthen Medicare, a plan for making more things here and it is a plan to take pressure off the cost of living.
 
JOURNALIST: Don't the results of that survey show voters actually don't know who you are, despite what you have been saying? Are you comfortable standing next to a candidate who has been forced to delete social media posts and profiles over controversial things he has said online in the past?
 
ALBANESE: I support Dan Repacholi as the candidate for Hunter. The truth is, if everyone is held to account, who now is a young person on social media for what they might put on social media in their 20s, then I tell you what, in 10 years’ time, you will struggle to hold a press conference because there won't be candidates. If you look at what young people do on social media, Dan Repacholi, I have got to know him in recent times. He has represented his country with honour. He has been a coal miner in this area. He has worked in industry, in small business before having to resign to run full-time. He was a manager of – I am not sure how many people, Dan?
 
REPACHOLI: 78.
 
ALBANESE: 78 people, to be precise. He is the sort of person I want to see in politics. Were all of his social media posts perfect? No, they weren't. He regrets that. We need to actually have real people coming in. This bloke is as real as they come. And I look forward to him being in the Federal Parliament. Thanks very much.
 
ENDS