SUBJECTS: COVID-19; vaccine rollout; need for national quarantine; Scott Morrison failing Australians during a pandemic; Sydney lockdown; announcement of financial support during lockdowns.

JOURNALIST: Would a 65 per cent vaccination rate have prevented the lockdown in Sydney?

ANTHONY ALBANESE, LEADER OF THE AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY: The fact is that this lockdown is Scott Morrison's lockdown. We have to fully vaccinate people. We have to roll out of the vaccine effectively. And we have to have national quarantine facilities. Those were the two jobs that the Prime Minister has had this year.

JOURNALIST: Do you welcome the increase to payments that Sydneysiders will receive?

ALBANESE: We welcome the fact that the Government has responded. The Prime Minister was saying last week that people had a buffer in terms of their savings. The truth is people in Greater Sydney are doing it really tough. This lockdown is a direct result of a failure to vaccinate enough of the population and a failure to have national quarantine facilities.

JOURNALIST: The advice from ATAGI has been changed when it comes to AstraZeneca. Is it damaging confidence?

ALBANESE: I think that we should have confidence in the health advice. I've said that I do not have 'Doctor' in front of my name. And we should listen to the health advice.

JOURNALIST: There is criticism from the Victorian Government that they had to shame the Prime Minister into taking action and now there's double standards when it comes to offering support to New South Wales. Is that fair? 

ALBANESE: I think that anyone who has a look at the rhetorical position that the Federal Government had towards New South Wales and Victoria will see that there's a distinction there.

JOURNALIST: So is he the Prime Minister for New South Wales, as Victoria is claiming?

ALBANESE: Well, Scott Morrison certainly has not been supportive of Victoria. And we saw, when I moved a resolution in the Parliament about supporting Victorians when they were having a difficult time, we saw Josh Frydenberg give a very provocative speech that I think speaks for itself.

JOURNALIST: AstraZeneca has made 11 million vaccines available to Australia. Only five and a half million have been used. Should the remainder now be sent to Sydney, now that anyone in a hotspot can get it?

ALBANESE: I'm not here to give health advice or to second guess it.

JOURNALIST: Isn’t the two weeks’ support that Victoria received during the June-May lockdown, isn’t that the same amount of money that New South Wales got for the first two weeks of this lockdown? Because it's gone into four weeks, that’s why it’s increasing? 

ALBANESE: If you compare the rhetorical position of the Prime Minister towards Victoria and New South Wales, there's a distinction there that is for all to see. The Prime Minister, when we asked questions about New South Wales, when Parliament last sat, praised New South Wales for not locking down, for not introducing restrictions. That's turned out to not be the right strategy. And we know that New South Wales is now in lockdown as a result of the Government's failure to roll out the vaccine effectively and to have national quarantine facilities.

JOURNALIST: Yesterday, you wrote that the Prime Minister’s vaccine failures are endangering lives. Do you stand by that?

ALBANESE: The fact is that we have had two lives lost in New South Wales as a result of this current outbreak.

JOURNALIST: So do you think that blood is on Mr Morrison’s hands?

ALBANESE: I don't think it's appropriate for you to use that sort of language. And it's not one that I've used. 

JOURNALIST: The Prime Minister has said that even if all the vaccine targets were reached initially, it still wouldn't be enough vaccinations in the community to stop lockdowns and prevent these sorts of deaths. Do you agree with that?

ALBANESE: This Prime Minister said a few things. He said that there'd be four million people vaccinated by the end of the March. He said that everyone in category 1A - aged care workers, aged care residents, disability care residents and others would be fully vaccinated by Easter. Neither of those things have occurred. Aged care workers, 60 per cent still haven't had their first jab. Greg Hunt said that all Australians would be vaccinated by October. That is what he said last year. Scott Morrison said that Australia was at the front of the queue for vaccines. It's very clear that we were at the back of the queue. It's very clear that this Prime Minister has not fulfilled the targets that he himself set. And now what we have is he's abandoned targets and has said that he has horizons. Well, we all know that horizons are never met. Thanks.

ENDS