SUBJECTS: Vaccine rollout; national quarantine; Morrison Government failing Australians during a health pandemic; Wellcamp proposal; vaccine hesitance.
 
ANTHONY ALBANESE, LEADER OF THE AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY: Thanks for joining me. This Government had two big jobs this year. To rollout the vaccine and to establish national quarantine facilities. It’s very clear that it's botched both. Yesterday's announcement on AstraZeneca is creating further confusion. And if the Government had done what Labor argued it should do, put in place multiple deals with vaccines such as Moderna, then they could have substituted very easily and avoided some of this confusion. Last night on 7:30 Report, the Co-Chair of ATAGI, Associate Professor Christopher Blyth, said this; vaccine supply remains relatively constrained. Now, this pandemic has been a crisis for a long period of time now. The Government has had more than a year to get its act together. And yet what we have is a failure to put in place a clear plan to deal with COVID going forward. Labor has put forward that four-point plan consistently to get the rollout of the vaccine right, to make sure that there are national quarantine facilities available with purpose-built facilities, to have a public information campaign that's effective, and to produce and manufacture mRNA vaccines right here in Australia.
 
The Government has not put in place any of those measures. And it put all their eggs in the AstraZeneca basket and now those chickens are coming home to roost. This is a real problem going forward. Because whilst we don't have an effective rollout of the vaccine, and whilst we don't have effective national quarantine, we'll continue to have breakouts. The absurdity of someone driving around foreign aircrews not being vaccinated that we've seen in Sydney this week just highlights the failure of the Government to do some basic things to get it right. And the cost, of course, will be an ongoing cost to our economy as well as to the health of Australians. Happy to take questions.
 
JOURNALIST: You say they have thrown all their eggs in the AstraZeneca basket. Do you think that's a bit of a cheap shot given there's population-wide supply for Pfizer, there is Moderna, they have Novavax, they also had the CSL candidate last year?
 
ALBANESE: Where can you get Moderna from today? Just anyone? Happy to take it. Happy to take it from anyone. Where can you get it from? 
 
JOURNALIST: It is not the only vaccine they have, is it?
 
ALBANESE: The fact is you can't. The fact is there are only two vaccines in Australia at the moment. AstraZeneca and Pfizer. And the Co-Chair of ATAGI, Associate Professor Christopher Blyth, said last night that vaccine supply remains relatively constrained. I spoke to people all the time who are trying to log on desperate to get vaccinated. They are in groups. They get messages back saying, ‘Thanks, you've registered, but you can't get a spot right now, log on at a later time and see if you can get a spot’. Now what that's doing is creating a real disincentive for people who are trying to do the right thing. A real disincentive. We know that essential workers, people in category 1A have not been vaccinated yet. Aged care residents, disability care residents, aged care workers. The Government can't even tell you how many, what percentage of aged care workers, have been vaccinated, because they sent them off to local GPs. The Government also has had the pharmacies, GPs, crying out saying, 'We're ready to help get an orderly system in place'. This Government insisted on controlling the rollout of the vaccine rather than delivering it through the states and area health services and pharmacies. And the truth is that as of today, less than three per cent of Australians are fully vaccinated, after they said four million people would be vaccinated in March. This is a Government that has missed every one of its targets.
 
JOURNALIST: Do you agree with Greg Hunt's comments that the change in advice should mean that there's a higher uptake now among 50-something year old Australians who have been reluctant to get AstraZeneca but now can get the Pfizer?
 
ALBANESE: Well, we'll wait and see. The problem here is the lack of a public information campaign. This Government have spent a billion dollars advertising themselves. They have ads for infrastructure that isn't built that they had during 2019 that still isn't built. They have had ads for their so-called recovery, post-Budget spin. Full page ads. You can log on to a website. It doesn't tell you anything. It's just the spin of the Government. And yet they don't have an effective public information campaign to roll out the vaccine. 
 
JOURNALIST: What did you make of the report in The Guardian that some in National Cabinet were concerned about 50-to-59-year olds taking AstraZeneca back in April? Did the Government fail that group?
 
ALBANESE: Well, no doubt it's a very good report, you would think, in The Guardian, as you would recommend. But I've got to say, I haven't read that. But it's very clear that there have been real issues here. And the Government needs to be more transparent about what the processes are. They need to be transparent about the meeting held last July that we asked about in Parliament, whereby you had a junior burger going along negotiating with Pfizer about the possibility of manufacturing Pfizer here and about access to the Pfizer vaccine here in large quantities. How is it that hasn't occurred? How is it that Greg Hunt, as the Health Minister, didn't take control of the process? Because they were too busy at that time saying we were at the front of the queue, with all of their rhetoric and all of this spin. What we need here is substance, not spin. And this is a Government that is addicted to marketing, and yet it can't market a public information campaign to roll out the vaccine. 
 
JOURNALIST: You mentioned two things. Vaccinations and quarantine. What's the solution on quarantine? 
 
ALBANESE: Well, the solution on quarantine is for purpose-built facilities like the one that exists in Howard Springs. There is another one potentially in Darwin that I mentioned in my Budget Reply. There is a facility in Toowoomba. It must be passing strange for ACT residents here, for example, to learn that one of the ANU colleges is going to be used for some of your colleagues in the press gallery and others when they return to quarantine for a couple of weeks. It's a good thing that there's separate facilities from the hotels that might be used in Civic. Why isn't that principle being adopted across the board? But I note the ACT Chief Minister today has said that you need a more permanent solution. All around Australia, you go to North Head, there are quarantine centres, many of them are now restaurants or other facilities that are used for weddings and all sorts of things around the country. That's the legacy of what happened a century ago. Those structures aren't wasted. That's investment in capital that can then be used for a range of other facilities. I know as Infrastructure Minister, Regional Development Minister, I can point you to standalone facilities in places like Bribie Island for students involved with the Greek Orthodox Church. There are all sorts of organisations that have sites around Australia. Why is it that we're not capable of building purpose-built sites for this crisis? This Government has spent hundreds of billions of dollars. It's racked up a trillion dollars of debt. And yet it can't fix purpose-built quarantine. I'll give one example, which I think is the best example, which is the ongoing rejection of the site near Toowoomba, just next to Wellcamp Airport. I've met with Mr Wagner. He has a record of building things pretty effectively, on time and on budget. He is an Australian success story. And he has land available. He's asking for $0 from the taxpayer. None. None whatsoever. And he says he could have 600 beds up within 12 weeks and could have up to a thousand on that site. It's right near Toowoomba Airport, it's right near the Toowoomba Base Hospital, close enough to it. It would be based similar to Howard Springs. And yet you have this nonsense from the Government making up criteria to exclude it. They are saying, 'Well, you have to have regular passenger transport international flights in order to knock that out'. Last time I looked there weren't international flights into Howard Springs right next door. It's just absurd. And you do have international flights out of that airport all the time for freight. And indeed, you have the Prime Minister's plane, the same one that he will get off or he would have got off whenever it was that he returned from an international flight. It's landed there as well. It's quite extraordinary that this Government seems absolutely determined to put Queensland last every time they look at any national issue.
 
JOURNALIST: In regard to the Toowoomba facility, you've said that Labor will listen to the medical advice. The Australian Medical Association of Queensland say they've had concerns raised by local doctors in regards to who would staff the facility, where those staff would come from, what the contingency planning would be in the case of an outbreak in Toowoomba given the hospital there is not a tertiary hospital and isn't set up to deal with typically contagious diseases and you'd have to transport patients back and forth to Brisbane, which would be a two hour trip each way taking, a significant amount of time, given that they're already suffering from ambulance ramping. Is there still some serious questions? 
 
ALBANESE: Well, I won't talk down Queensland. And I'm surprised that some people at this press conference are prepared to do that. 
 
JOURNALIST: Are you saying that the doctors are talking down Queensland by raising concerns that haven't been addressed with regards to the facility? 
 
ALBANESE: Not at all. Howard Springs has had zero outbreaks. None. Not one health issue arising out of Howard Springs. Toowoomba is modelled on Howard Springs. The fact is if we get best practice right, the whole point here is to avoid outbreaks. The outbreaks that have occurred from an Adelaide hotel that infected and spread to Melbourne. The sort of outbreaks that we've seen now in Sydney. The whole idea is to get this right and to get that detail right. It is a very comprehensive plan. I've discussed it with Mr Wagner. I've discussed it with Premier Palaszczuk. And I've discussed it with the Queensland Health Minister as well. And the fact is, there are some people in this building, including some Queenslanders, maybe you should direct your question to the Defence Minister, who my understanding is he's very supportive of the proposal, but it's been blocked by the Prime Minister. 
 
JOURNALIST: You've got some MPs in your own party who appear to have been talking about the AstraZeneca vaccine. Are you concerned this could reinforcing hesitancy? 
 
ALBANESE: What are you referring to?
 
JOURNALIST: Tweets from Kristina Keneally today, for example, raising concerns, that kind of thing. Are you worried about that?
 
ALBANESE: The problem with this rollout is a problem of public information. And the fact is that there's a whole range of people, you can talk to any MP in this building about whether 50-year-olds who've had one vaccine and are concerned about whether they should get their second have contacted their local MP. It is not Labor that are responsible for the confusion and the different messages which have been sent from this Government. And the fact is that in other countries such as the UK, because they did multiple deals and they examined best practice, when there was an issue with AstraZeneca in the UK, then Moderna stepped in. We've been talking about this for a long period of time, Chris Bowen, and then Mark Butler, and myself as the Leader. If you go back, you can look at transcripts from press conferences from a year ago now, talking about the need to have five or six deals, talking about international best practice, talking about the issue of quarantine, talking about bringing Australians home. The fact is that this Government had a number of targets. It said we were at the front of the queue. We're not in the top 100. It said four million Australians would be vaccinated by the end of March. And what we have is less than three per cent fully vaccinated today. It said that everyone in the vulnerable categories, aged care residents, aged care workers, disability care residents, would all be done by Easter. And they're still not done today. It said it would bring all Australians home by Christmas, and there's still more than 30,000 Australians stranded overseas. This is a Government that have botched the two big jobs that it had this year in terms of vaccinations and quarantine. And it's a Government as well when it comes to other issues, it's not like it's dealing with another agenda and a future agenda post-COVID. This week we have seen nothing about ensuring there's a better recovery. What we've seen is an attack on superannuation. We saw an LNP Senator, Senator Rennick, say it is time to kill superannuation, stone-cold dead. We saw legislation passed that will lock three million Australians into underperforming funds for reasons beyond my comprehension. We've seen the Government introduce regulations for ARENA that may well be not legal, because ARENA, the hint is in the title. It's about renewables. We see Keith Pitt saying that there's no way that he will cop, and the Nats will cop, a move to net zero emissions by 2050. And you see the embarrassment of Boris Johnson verballing our Prime Minister, the Australian Prime Minister, saying that somehow, he had adopted net zero by 2050 when we all know that he hasn't, because he can't. Because this Government is incapable of action. Thanks very much.
 
ENDS