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

ANTHONY ALBANESE, LEADER OF THE AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY: Thanks for joining me. First, I want to acknowledge that ten million Australians are in lockdown right now. They're doing it tough. And I want to acknowledge the hardship which is there as the direct result of these lockdowns, particularly concern for people's mental health. I want to also acknowledge the ongoing work that our essential workers are doing – aged care workers, people in the health sector, people who are providing the work in supermarkets and keeping the country going, even in those areas where lockdowns occurring. People do want certainty. They want to know what the road is out of this. And we know that the key to the road out of this and avoiding future lockdowns is the two jobs that the Prime Minister had this year – the rollout of the vaccine and national quarantine. Until we get the vaccine rolled out effectively and until we get national quarantine, fit-for-purpose facilities, we will continue to have breakouts. We've now had in the order of 28 breakouts from quarantine. We see that around about ten per cent of Australians are fully vaccinated. We still have one in six aged care workers who haven't been able to be vaccinated. So the debate here often has been about what compulsion there should be. The truth is that Australians who want to be vaccinated are having great difficulty getting access to the vaccines. And that's because of supply. That's because we didn't do enough deals with enough pharmaceutical manufacturers early enough in enough quantity last year. And as a result, we have real issues. And that's why I note today in the newspaper reports about lotteries taking place. Well, the truth is that Scott Morrison put all of his bets on red, he put it all on AstraZeneca. And when there were issues there, that meant that the chickens have come home to roost. He should have had more deals with more companies. And that's very clear. Scott Morrison gambled by not doing enough deals and by saying that Australia was at the front of the queue when we know we were way, way, way at the back and we remain last in the developed world. So today in National Cabinet, what states will be looking for, and people under duress with these lockdowns will be looking for, is certainty. The Federal Government was directly responsible for failing on the vaccine and directly responsible for failing on national quarantine. And it has a responsibility to ensure that businesses can stay afloat, that workers can continue to get income, that we keep those workers connected with their employers into the future. That is critical.

Can I also just conclude with this comment that it shouldn't have needed the intervention of a former Prime Minister to have Scott Morrison pick up the phone to the head of Pfizer. It's completely extraordinary that it is now July of 2021, a year after some junior burgher went along to a meeting with Pfizer about access to their vaccine, and the Prime Minister only today has picked up the phone. Happy to take questions

JOURNALIST: We have got two very different styles of lockdowns where in New South Wales retail is open and there's no list of essential jobs, but the settings are the reverse in Victoria. Should National Cabinet set a standard set of rules for when lockdowns are necessary?

ALBANESE: I think people need certainty. And I am concerned about the failure to define essential workers will create confusion. People want clear messages. And the whole idea of National Cabinet when it was formed, now some 15 or 16 months ago, was to get some national consistency. And we haven't had that. It's very clear that the Victorian Government have made a decision that they had to make. We know that in New South Wales, we had, of course, at one stage it wasn’t even called a lockdown, it was called a stay-at-home order in some areas, and then it spread to more areas. And they were very reluctant. And when we asked questions when Parliament last sat, Scott Morrison praised the New South Wales Government for not locking down. We know that the consequences of not taking action are that you end up with a larger outbreak affecting more people and a longer lockdown, which is what New South Wales is going through now.

JOURNALIST: Do you think the lockdown in Sydney needs to be stricter than it is now?

ALBANESE: Well, I think we should take the health advice, as I've consistently said. One of the issues here has been, from time to time, political leaders making decisions that should be on the basis of the health advice. What we know from the health experts is that this variant of the virus is one which spreads very quickly. And we need to take action to ensure that we limit the length of the lockdown.

JOURNALIST: Let me try asking the question another way. Brendan O’Connor says that the restrictions should be tighter in Sydney. Do you agree?

ALBANESE: I think that, with due respect to Dr O'Connor, one of the things that I've said as non-Doctor Albanese as well, is that we should be listening to the health experts. The health experts tell us that you need to really lock this down heavily in order to achieve an outcome and in order to restrict the time in which you lock down. And it's very clear in New South Wales that it was allowed to spread more than if there had been a stronger lockdown earlier. We need to learn those lessons that have occurred. And that's why, in terms of the support, I note the Victorian Premier saying there needed to be more support on the basis of a five-day lockdown rather than a week. The Victorian Government have made the decision to lock down hard, to do it for five days, in the hope that it will only last for those five days.

JOURNALIST: On the disaster payment, ACOSS are pointing out today that if you're on JobSeeker or Youth Allowance, you get less money a week than if you were eligible for this hotspot payment. Do you think more Australians should be eligible to get this level of financial support?

ALBANESE: I think that the issue here in the past is that the Government have been very generous towards some corporations in particular. What we saw with JobKeeper is that some companies received benefits who actually were increasing their revenue, increasing their profits, and that went into payments to executives and shareholders. At the same time, we've seen a limit on payments to others. If the Government targeted spending expenditure more wisely, it would have more money to contribute to others. And I think that the Government should err on the side of generosity during this crisis because people are doing it tough.

JOURNALIST: Mr Albanese, you're trying to tell Australians that you should be country's next Prime Minister. In that case, what's your plan to reopen Australia to the rest of the world?

ALBANESE: I have a four-point plan. And it's a four-point plan that I've been advocating now for all of this year and from the end of last year. It is an effective rollout of the vaccine, national purpose-built quarantine, an effective public information campaign and to manufacture mRNA vaccines here.

JOURNALIST: When do you open Australia to the rest of the world then?

ALBANESE: I'm not the Government.

JOURNALIST: But you're trying to provide Australians with an alternative view of leadership after the next election. In that view?

ALBANESE: In that scenario, when you achieve those things, you'll be able to participate in global activity. And one of the concerns here that I have is that the world is opening up as Australia is locking down. And that is as a direct result of a failure to roll out the vaccine effectively, and a direct result to have purpose-built quarantine facilities.

JOURNALIST: Under what scenario does Australia open up to the rest of the world then? The rest of the world is experiencing cases, increasing deaths, like we’re seeing in the UK. Under what scenario is Australia opening up to the rest of the world?

ALBANESE: When we achieve the criteria that I've outlined in my four-point plan that I've been outlining now since last year. And can I make this point? If we had done more deals, if we had access to more vaccines, if they had gone into more arms, then we wouldn't be in this position now. And we wouldn't be in a position of having 30,000 Australians stranded overseas. We'd be in a position of more engagement with the world. And can I make this point as well? That we said that a long time ago. This isn't something in retrospect that we are saying. A year ago, Chris Bowen, as the Shadow Health Minister, and myself, as the Leader of the Australian Labor Party, were saying you needed to do at least five or six deals. Instead, what we had was a Prime Minister who put all of the eggs in the AstraZeneca basket. That was the lotto ticket that he held. He just bought one ticket. The truth is there aren't enough tickets.

JOURNALIST: That fourth point you said was that we have to be manufacturing mRNA vaccines here. So you're saying Australia should not open up to the rest of the world until they're manufacturing those vaccines here?

ALBANESE: No.

JOURNALIST: That is what you just said.

ALBANESE: Good luck with that verballing. One at a time. Sorry, but women get to ask questions too.

JOURNALIST: So you just said, 'Here is my four-point plan'.

ALBANESE: Yes.

JOURNALIST: And then you said we wouldn't open until we do all those four points.

ALBANESE: Good try. What you need to do is to have more progress than is there now. I have said, very clearly, I am not the Government. If we were in place, if we were in Government, I have been saying for a year, that these are the things you need to do to put yourself in a position to open up our economy and to open up our economy to the world. They're the things that you need to advance. And the truth is that at the moment, in terms of the advancement of those projects. One, the rollout of the vaccine, we're on around about ten per cent, we are last in the developed world. National quarantine facilities, we have not advanced any of them. There are no new national quarantine facilities under construction. Three, the public information campaign. I mean, quite frankly, it has been non-existent up until a week ago, and has been very poor indeed. And I had a meeting with the Muslim Women's Association yesterday. There is so much confusion out there. A failure to communicate to people in community languages, different messages going out there. So that has been a failure. And the manufacturing of mRNA vaccines, obviously takes time. There's been no advancement. There's no deal to advance that whatsoever. What you need is progress to the point whereby you can make a confident decision based on the health experts, not from the politicians, of 'Are we in a position to open up?'

JOURNALIST: Mr Albanese, the World Health Organization Director General last night said that it was premature to rule out the Wuhan lab theory that the virus leaked from the lab. He said that he was not given the raw data from China at the start of the pandemic. He also said he was a lab technician himself, accidents happen, it's common. Has the World Health Organization failed the globe by failing to identify the origin of the virus? And what is your view of the Wuhan lab theory?

ALBANESE: My view is we need to identify the origin of the virus and where it came from. Not just as an academic exercise but so as to ensure that mechanisms can be put in place, so this never happens again.

JOURNALIST: The Prime Minister and the Victorian Premier have both said that in the future, lockdowns and border restrictions won't be used to protect people who won't to protect themselves by getting vaccinated. Do you agree that's the standard for reopening, when people have been offered a vaccine, rather than when we reach a certain proportion of the population that has been vaccinated?

ALBANESE: I'm not sure what the context of the conversation is. But in general, should people be vaccinated? Yes, they should. Is there compulsion for the entire population to be vaccinated? No, there isn't. So therefore, quite clearly, we will not reach 100 per cent vaccination rates. Can I say this about those people who spread fear by being the anti-vaxxers who are promoting misinformation. There is no role for them. I note that parliamentary security, just before I came up here, have advised of a demonstration here in Canberra next week, I think it is. I think that there's no role, and I had the same position with anti-vaxxers about other immunisations as well. Immunisations save lives. Science saves lives. We should listen to science. We should act on it.

JOURNALIST: The context is that we might reach 70 or 75 per cent immunisation rate with the rest refusing to get a vaccine. Should we open up at that point, even though it will cause disease and death amongst those who won't get a vaccine?

ALBANESE: I've been asked in terms of similar versions of that question before. And I give the same answer. We should listen to the health experts. We should, at all times, do what we can to promote people getting vaccinated. It's important. It's important for you.

JOURNALIST: So you're the same as the Government then? The Government will say it follows the health advice, it follows their experts. All the details you have said today was that you will follow the health advice (inaudible).

ALBANESE: The Prime Minister, in recent comments, you might have noted, has actually undermined the ATAGI advice, has been critical of the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation. That's something I haven't done. And that's something I won't do. Thanks very much.

ENDS