SUBJECTS: Barnaby Joyce elected Leader of the National Party; Vaccine rollout; national quarantine; Morrison Government failing Australians during a health pandemic; climate change; net zero by 2050; Great Barrier Reef.

ANTHONY ALBANESE, LEADER OF THE AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY: Good morning. What we saw from the Government yesterday was an act of self-indulgence. Barnaby Joyce is a failed former Deputy Prime Minister who's been sworn back into the job that he's coveted for more than three years, just this morning. This Government had two jobs this year. They had to roll out the vaccine and they had to put in place national quarantine facilities. There's now been 24 outbreaks from hotel quarantine and just three per cent of Australians are fully vaccinated. What we needed from this Government is more jabbing and less stabbing. But what we've got from this Government is a self-obsessed Government just focused on itself, not focused on the needs of the Australian people. 

JOURNALIST: With Mr Joyce back, do you believe your job just got easier? Do you believe you've got a better chance of winning the election?

ALBANESE: That'll all be a matter for the Australian people. But we've had a strategy that I've outlined from the day that I became the Labor Leader. We'll continue to do that. Hold the Government to account each and every day, but also present a real alternative, an alternative based upon economic recovery, coming back stronger, not just trying to return to what was there before. We will have our National Reconstruction Fund. It will be about boosting manufacturing and jobs in the region. We'll be concentrating on fair work, the fact that so many Australians are being left behind. Australians haven't had a wage increase for eight years. And under this Government, their wages are going to go down over the next four. This is a Government that don't have a plan for the future. They don't even have a plan for the current. It's extraordinary that 18 months into this pandemic, they're having a review into how they roll out the vaccine. What a good idea to maybe use pharmacies, when pharmacies have been crying out to be used to roll out the vaccine. We had every state premier yesterday saying that they can't get access to supply. We've got offers of the Wellcamp site near Toowoomba to build a national quarantine facility rejected by this Government, even though they're not asking for any federal funding to build that structure. The fact is that this is a Government that's so focused on itself. And we saw it yesterday very much front and centre. 

JOURNALIST: Some health officials in Senate Estimates yesterday said that the reason they hadn't started a public advertising campaign for the vaccine was because they were concerned about meeting demand. What do you think that says about the rollout of the vaccine? 

ALBANESE: That says it all. We have said four jobs that the Government has had since last year to prepare for and then implement: rollout the vaccine effectively, national quarantine, a public information campaign and manufacture mRNA vaccines here. Now they're saying they can't roll out a public information campaign to encourage people to be vaccinated because we don't have a supply of the vaccine to actually be used. It's an extraordinary concession by a Government, particularly a Government that's obsessed by advertising and marketing, a Government that has spent a billion dollars marketing infrastructure projects haven't been built, haven't been started. A Government that has put full-page ads spinning its lines from the Budget with no public interest at its heart. A Government obsessed by marketing, but which can't actually market a campaign for vaccinations. No wonder, combined with the confusing messages which are out there, that our vaccination rates are so low. This Government's been too busy promoting itself, saying it was at the front of the queue, when in fact it is not in the top 100 of countries and just three per cent of Australians are fully vaccinated.

JOURNALIST: There's the proposal to declare the Great Barrier Reef as endangered from UNESCO. It is being chaired by China. Is this a symptom of our deteriorating relationship or a genuine concern about the Reef?

ALBANESE: No, this is a product of the fact that climate change is a threat to the Reef. This Government, remember, its biggest initiative on the Reef is for people who rocked up to a meeting in Parliament House asking for nothing and walked out of the meeting with over $400 million of taxpayers' money with no accountability, no proper processes at all for that expenditure. This is a Government that, combined with that, don't have a plan for the Reef but they also don't have a plan for climate change. And the elevation of a climate change sceptic to the position of Deputy Prime Minister will just further damage Australia's international reputation at a time where at the G7 last week, all of the world's leaders are saying we need to get to net zero by 2050. What we have is a rump in the Coalition, in the National Party and in the Liberal Party, but it's a rump that's holding back Australia. It's one thing to be concerned about the future. It's another thing to respond to that by being so far stuck in the past, which Barnaby Joyce represents. That's not the problem that he's stuck back there. The problem is he wants the rest of Australia to go back there and keep him company. And there are consequences for that. Thanks.

ENDS