SUBJECTS: COVID outbreaks and restrictions around Australia; vaccine rollout; need for national quarantine; Doherty modelling; national plan for reopening; Labor’s $300 vaccination cash incentive; National Cabinet.

HOST: We love it when somebody comes on the show for the first time. It's always good, isn't it?

HOST: I always enjoy the first. 

HOST: The first time. When you get older you don't have as many of those.

HOST: No, you don't. And this is one of those that we will cherish forever. Because please welcome to the show, he's an Australian politician, he's been a Member of Parliament since 1996 - must have started when he was four - and he has served as Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the Australian Labor Party since 2019. Please welcome Mr Anthony 'Albo' Albanese. Albo, welcome.

ANTHONY ALBANESE, LEADER OF THE AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY: Thanks for the warm welcome. You have got a crowd there as well. How about that?

HOST: We brought them in for you. They have all got shirts on for you. I know it's an audio medium, but I promise you they are wearing shirts that say 'Albo'. 

ALBANESE: Very good. 

HOST: First things first, mate. How are you? How are you going personally? Of course, there's a lot going on in Australia at the moment, a lot on your plate. But how are you going personally?

ALBANESE: I am going okay. I haven't been home since June. But apart from that I am going well. I'm in the Canberra lockdown still at the moment. Parliament's finished for the session so that's quite good to get through that. And looking forward to getting home soon.

HOST: Albo, what do pollies do in lockdown? 

HOST: What do you do to kill time?

HOST: What are you doing to kill time? We know a lot of people, they'll play PlayStation games, athletes will still do training and stuff. Are you like practicing speeches and writing down policies? What are you doing in lockdown?

ALBANESE: Doing a fair bit of reading and spending a lot more time on speeches than I normally would. The night before last, I spent about three hours on a 10-minute speech that normally I'd spend 15 minutes preparing for. It does give you a bit more time. I've got a say, I have watched more footy, both Rugby League and AFL, on TV than I have for a long, long time. So the weekends are dominated by that. Here in Canberra, there is a beautiful Lake Burley Griffin walk that you can do around from bridge to bridge basically, which is quite nice. Canberra is not quite as beautiful as Hobart, of course. But it's good to get out and about.

HOST: Well said, Albo. Knows he is on Hobart radio. How do you think old mate ScoMo is going? I read something the other day that blew my mind that he's now our longest serving Prime Minister since John Howard. Because there was a while that we were just going through them all the time. And it only feels like ScoMo has been in the job for a bit. Maybe we've all lost sense of time since COVID happened. But how do you think he's handling things at the moment?

ALBANESE: He had two big jobs this year and he botched them. The vaccine rollout was a bit of a shocker, frankly. We were told we were the first in the queue and we're still running fourth last in the developed world for the vaccine rollout. And quarantine, we should have fixed quarantine properly. Hotels aren't a great place to put people in the middle of cities. There have been 27 outbreaks. And that's why I'm in lockdown now. It all came from one limo driver, just one driver taking a foreign aircrew, and now the whole of New South Wales, Victoria, ACT, and indeed New Zealand all have lockdowns all coming from that one mistake. So I think Scott Morrison's problem is he always sort of talks things up positive, 'It'll be right, we are at the front of the queue', all of that. But you've got to actually deliver, not just promise.

HOST: Albo, we know we're behind the eight ball with the vaccine rollout. And something that you've been pretty passionate about, which is interesting, I'd love for you to explain it to us, the vaccine incentive plan that you've been pretty passionate about. The idea to give people, I think it was up to $300 cash payments to people who did get vaccinated as an incentive. Is this something that you're still pretty passionate about, Albo?

ALBANESE: I am. Both as an incentive and a reward for those people who've already done the right thing. We have to throw everything at this, getting the vaccine numbers up. And the truth is that some people are saying, 'Yeah, I'll get it done, but I'll get around to it, there's no rush', particularly in areas which haven't got COVID. And places like Tassie has been relatively good and certainly is good at the moment. And that's why you see the vaccine, rollout rates jump when there's a crisis. But you don't want people to be in that situation. You want them to get out there and get out there now to avoid that. Plus, there are people who've tried to get appointments and they can't get appointments, they're frustrated, and they've given up. You want to bring those people back in to the system as well. And the economy would benefit from everyone getting $300. So I think it's a win-win. And if you're going to need economic stimulus, that I think you will, then why wouldn't you link it to a positive health outcome?

HOST: I mean, the stimulus is absolutely there for a lot of struggling businesses. What do you say to Scotty when he comes out and says that it's essentially a vote of no confidence in Australians, putting this incentive money out there, pretty much saying that Australians aren't going to get vaccinated without that? What do you say to that?

ALBANESE: What I say to him is that he introduced No Jab, No Pay for child care. You can't get a child care rebate. You can't get Family Assistance payments in a range of areas that he introduced when he was Social Security Minister. And that wasn't because people wouldn't use child care and people didn't love their kids unless they got that incentive in there. Economic incentives work. That is the truth.

HOST: I mean, we had plenty of messages from people being like, 'Yes, I'll get vaxxed, 300 bucks, I will get vaxxed twice, I'll get AstraZeneca and Pfizer'.

HOST: People trying to load up to get the cash. That's not how it works. 

ALBANESE: Do you have prizes on your radio show? 

HOST: Yes. 

ALBANESE: Of course, you do. People would listen to you even if you didn't have prizes. Because you're so fantastic, I'm sure. 

HOST: A vax for Village Cinemas. That's what we're doing. You get a vax and we'll send you to the movies with a free large popcorn. 

HOST: Can we ask as well, we have been very lucky down here in Tas. And look, we know that most of Australia, they're in lockdown. And Australians, they're tired and they're frustrated. What can be done? How do we get out of this? How do we open up and how do we do it safely?

ALBANESE: Well, you do it by having enough of the population vaccinated and fixing quarantine so that there are purpose-built facilities. They're the two keys to opening up. And we need to do it because it is really difficult. I haven't seen my son for three months. It's tough. And families have been separated. People can't get to work. In my electorate in Sydney, because it's local government boundaries, some of the rules, on one side of the street they are in curfew, the other side of the street, they're not. Like, it's really confusing for people. And we need life to return to normal. I want to come back there to Tassie. 

HOST: We'll be happy to have you, mate. It's beautiful down here. 

ALBANESE: Don't rub it in.

HOST: I'm sure that walk around Canberra is lovely. One thing that we've been talking a lot on the show is that we feel like a lot of the state leaders aren't streamlined in their approach to opening up and vaccination rates and when and how and if they are going to open up to other states and that kind of stuff. When are we going to see some kind of unification across all these different states and everyone kind of on the same page? Because at the moment, we see all these premiers coming out and everyone's saying different things. And I feel like it's confusing and also confronting for a lot of people.

ALBANESE: Well, I'll give you the big tip. Scott Morrison calling Western Australians and Queenslanders cave dwellers probably wasn't the best way to increase cooperation. But the truth is that state premiers, including the Tassie State Premier, where I can't go to Tassie either, are doing the right thing to keep their state safe. I get it. I'm not critical of any of them, Labor or Liberal, who've done that. I get it completely. That's their first responsibility to keep their state safe. But we do need to have a more streamlined approach, if you like. There is a national plan in place that speaks about different changes for 70 per cent and 80 per cent. It does say though, that there will be targeted lockdowns only and hopefully fewer of them once you get to 80 per cent. So there is that in place. I support that process. But I think the problem has been that the National Cabinet will be meeting today, they have a meeting once a week where state premiers tell each other what to do and then it's announced rather than a much more streamlined national approach. And that's the way that Scott Morrison has gone about it, I guess, which is unfortunate because we still have terrible figures of First Nations people in terms of the numbers of people who've been vaccinated. They are a vulnerable community. We still have aged care workers who haven't been vaccinated. They were told that they were at the front of the queue. They were supposed to be done by Easter. And same with people who are in disability care. And it's been really, really slow. And the key to that has been the fact that we just didn't order enough vaccines early enough. That's the Commonwealth Government's responsibility.

HOST: Well, Albo, we can't thank you enough for joining us. Anthony Albanese, Opposition Leader, before we let you go, we were talking about, just before, the incentive. Jimmy and I are both double vaxxed. So our BSB, if you want to flick us through that cash, get a pen and paper out.

ALBANESE: We'll put out a transcript of this.

HOST: Albo, we appreciate your time on the show this morning. Welcome to the Jimmy and Nath Show. 

ALBANESE: If you can include your PIN number, that'd be great.

HOST: Thank you, Albo. Appreciate your time, buddy.

ENDS