SUBJECTS: Sydney COVID lockdown; Vaccine rollout; national quarantine; Morrison Government failing Australians during a health pandemic; Christian Porter; lockdowns.

ANTHONY ALBANESE, LEADER OF THE AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY: Scott Morrison had two jobs this year. The effective rollout of the vaccine and national quarantine facilities. We know what is happening with the rollout of the vaccine with around-about five per cent of Australians being fully vaccinated. And we know that has had consequences, including, in spite of warnings being given very explicitly to the Federal Government, someone transporting foreign aircrew to hotel quarantine who had not been vaccinated. It just shows this Government’s complacency and the consequences of it. The consequences of that are an effective lockdown of four Sydney locations right now for a further week as a result of the Government's arrogance and its complacency. When it comes to quarantine, it's a good thing that Scott Morrison's rhetoric of more than a year now, rejecting the idea of appropriate purpose-built quarantine facilities, has been overturned. It's a pity that there's not appropriate detail that the National Cabinet process hasn't been used and a letter dropped to the newspapers last night is as far as that detail goes. But we support, and have been calling for now for a long period of time, appropriate national quarantine facilities. The Government has to get this right. And yesterday in Parliament, Scott Morrison dismissed, yet again, the need for appropriate action on his Government's behalf. But there are real consequences. Real consequences for people's health and real consequences for people being able to go about their life in a normal way. Scott Morrison hasn't so much dropped the ball because he never picked it up in the first place. And the Government needs to get it right. And I would ask my colleagues to make some comments as well.

MARK BUTLER, SHADOW MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGEING: Thanks, everyone. Thanks, Anthony and Kristina. We now have community transmission of highly infectious variants of the COVID virus in our three largest states on the eastern seaboard. At the same time, we only have three per cent of the Australian population fully vaccinated. We have a quarantine system that is reliant on hotels that were built for tourism, not for medical quarantine, and that are seeing outbreaks on more than a weekly basis. We've had four outbreaks in the last three weeks. And we also heard from Scott Morrison's handpicked adviser, Jane Halton, yesterday that she warned him last year that the transport arrangements between those airports and hotels were in her words ‘a potential hole that needed to be a high priority’. And in response to that advice, Scott Morrison did absolutely nothing. And yesterday, yet again, he tried to throw the state premiers under the bus and pretend this was all their fault. International arrivals across the Australian border and quarantine are both clear Commonwealth responsibilities. And Scott Morrison had an obligation to the Australian people to follow that advice and to fix and secure the transport arrangements. And because of his failure not to do that, Sydney now, millions of people, are experiencing enormous disruption, economic loss, having to cancel school holiday arrangements because of his failure. He has bungled the vaccine rollout. He's neglected his responsibilities on quarantine. And now he's failed to follow the clearest possible advice to secure transport arrangements.

KRISTINA KENEALLY, DEPUTY LABOR LEADER IN THE SENATE & SHADOW MINISTER FOR GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY: Thanks, Mark. Just briefly from a government accountability standpoint, one has to wonder what Scott Morrison has been doing for the last 16 months. We are 16 months into this pandemic. We do not have fit-for-purpose national quarantine systems in place. We do not have an effective rollout of the vaccine. Scott Morrison likes to say he doesn't hold a hose, but he clearly doesn't hold responsibility either. Duck-shoving the blame onto the states. Now, when it comes to fit-for-purpose national quarantine, we should have a system right across Australia. This one-and-a-half-page letter from Scott Morrison to state premiers dropped to the media before it was delivered to the state governments just shows how this Prime Minister likes to play politics rather than come up with solutions. Scott Morrison's failures on quarantine and vaccines are leaving Australians behind.

ALBANESE: Happy to take questions.

JOURNALIST: This was given to two different states, Queensland and WA. Do you think other states should also have been given letters suggesting potential quarantine facilities, like South Australia and Tasmania?

ALBANESE: Well, they, of course, were given to two different media outlets is what happened here. And that just shows, I think, the failure of Scott Morrison when it comes to appropriate national leadership. We have been saying day after day, week after week, month after month, since this time last year, and indeed before then, that appropriate national quarantine facilities needed to be put in place. Scott Morrison has rejected that day after day, week after week, month after month. And then last night, in order to, I guess, distract from other issues that this chaotic Government has shown itself to be in this week, a week whereby we've had a coup with a Deputy Prime Minister replaced with a failed former Deputy Prime Minister, where we had members of the Government moving motions in the Senate and in the House of Representatives to overturn Government policy, where we had both wings of the National Party united by the opposition to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, where we have outbreaks in Sydney that have having real consequences and you had the National Party in New South Wales seemingly ignoring a bit of common sense in Parliament. And you have consequences for that. So this morning, we wake up to two newspaper headlines and, of course, the premiers receiving those letters last night. This is not leadership. This is not bringing the country together. This is a political news drop, which contradicts the Government's own statements and Scott Morrison's own statements he's been making for more than a year that everything's all okay. But that is the thing that characterises this Government. ‘She'll be right, mate’ attitude, without doing the hard yards, without looking at what the appropriate measures are, without taking the right advice, and without showing leadership. 

JOURNALIST: These quarantine facilities aren't due to be completed, if they get it off the ground, until at least the end of the year. Do you think that there should be some kind of acceleration on building those, given the situation we're facing at the moment? 

ALBANESE: Well, of course they should be. But the problem here is that it is starting so late. They should have been in place now. If national quarantine facilities and appropriate transport measures were in place and people were vaccinated who are essential workers, we wouldn't have this breakout, we wouldn't have this effective lockdown in four local government areas of Sydney, we wouldn't have restrictions on people's activity, we wouldn't have people cancelling school holidays if these measures had been put in place. But best-case scenario is that these facilities won't be up and running for many, many months, probably into 2022. And that contradicts, as well, with the proposal for Wellcamp, which can be up and running in 12 weeks with people who have a track record of being able to deliver infrastructure very quickly, in terms of the Wellcamp Airport itself. And that's a proposal that was put forward by the Queensland Premier in October of last year with a full proposal. This is just a short letter from the Prime Minister.

JOURNALIST: Scott Morrison has hinted at these quarantine facilities being used into the future for various other reasons. But if they do take until 2022, like he suggests, to actually be constructed, what real value do they have?

ALBANESE: The quarantine facilities that were built last century during the last pandemic have still continued to be used. Go to North Head in Sydney and you'll see that. When you have infrastructure being built, it doesn't just disappear. It can be used for a range of other facilities. And that's why the Government's reluctance to go down this track is so confusing for anyone who has a common-sense attitude towards these issues. State premiers have been crying out for action on this. Labor and Liberal. Gladys Berejiklian was making comments about purpose-built quarantine facilities, as well as the Labor premiers. And we've had that ignored and rejected and dismissed and at times ridiculed by this Prime Minister.

JOURNALIST: The transport worker was eligible for the AstraZeneca vaccine, but was probably too nervous to get it or hesitant. Where do you think the problem there lies?

ALBANESE: Well, there's a problem with the vaccine rollout. I'm from Sydney. I tell you what. People from my community who log on, in the Inner West, who log on and try to get it, who say that they're eligible to be vaccinated, I'll tell you what happens. They log on, they get a number to go to RPA to be vaccinated and then they get told there is no appointment available. And I've seen documentation, which people have tried month after month after month, right up to March 2022 and can't get an appointment. And we know from Senate Estimates this week that when people asked why is it that there hasn't been a public information campaign to support the rollout of the vaccine, the people in charge said we didn't have a public information campaign because we don't have the supply in order to meet increased demand that any public information campaign would bring. Look, we have said now for more than a year, in a pandemic that began at the beginning of 2020, that we needed four elements of a plan. Effective rollout of the vaccine, national quarantine facilities, a public information campaign and manufacture mRNA vaccines here in Australia. And what we have from the Government is no effective rollout of the vaccine, we are in the order of five per cent. We have national quarantine facilities that have been rejected, except for a letter given to newspapers last night. We have no public information campaign. And we're told that the manufacturing of mRNA vaccines might be four years away, even though this Government was meeting with Pfizer last July, almost a year ago, and they sent along a junior burger with a note pad rather than serious negotiations to achieve an outcome in our national interest.

JOURNALIST: The dossier into Christian Porter's rape allegations was released publicly yesterday. Do you think that this renews calls for there to be an independent inquiry into that?

ALBANESE: Christian Porter needs to have a process whereby there's examination of whether he's a fit and proper person to serve as a Cabinet Minister. Our position hasn't changed on that. The Government continues to, I guess, assume that this will just go away. And the fact that there hasn't been any independent examination of these issues means that his position and the cloud over it remains outstanding. 

JOURNALIST: Have you read the dossier? 

ALBANESE: No.

JOURNALIST: We've seen that the states and territories have reacted quite differently every time we have an outbreak, locking down to different parts of Sydney or New South Wales or different local government areas. Do we need national agreement to do the same thing every time there's an outbreak?

ALBANESE: Well, I've said many times that the so-called National Cabinet process is really where state premiers and chief ministers come together to tell each other what they're doing and then Scott Morrison holds a press conference to claim credit for anything that's positive and to shift blame for anything that's negative. That's the process that is in place. And we saw that again last night. If Scott Morrison was serious about national quarantine and about appropriate national consistency and national processes, why is it that in order to get a headline, remember just a little while ago, you would have all reported on it, we were going “on war-footing”, and then, a couple of weeks later, the war ended, apparently. Apparently, it ended. And then on Monday, we were having an “emergency National Cabinet meeting” because Parliament was sitting and apparently that then resolved things. And then last night, we have a new front opened, a new advance, with a couple of short letters dropped to media overnight. This Prime Minister needs to be serious about the national response. But this Prime Minister has been determined to play politics, determined to shift blame at every opportunity. And it isn't just Labor premiers who think that, but if you look at Gladys Berejiklian's comments, her views are pretty obvious for all to see as well.

JOURNALIST: What do you see the rest of 2021 in Australia would be like? Your colleague, Richard Marles has said we are living in the land of lockdown. What do you think?

ALBANESE: Well, it's very clear that today it's being called something else in the four LGA areas. Looks like a lockdown to me, if people are subject to those constraints. Look, until we get the rollout of the vaccine right and until we get national quarantine facilities right as well, we'll continue to have these outbreaks. And that will limit people's economic activity. And that will limit people going about their way of life. And that is an issue. Australians have been remarkable during this period since 2020. They've shown discipline, they've made sacrifices. They'll continue to do so. But they're doing it tough. And I know that many people in Sydney are doing it tough. Many people who'd like to be back in Sydney, people are having to make different arrangements that are there. I was hoping to visit Western Australia with my shadow ministerial colleagues. We are still having a Shadow Ministry meeting but many of us won't be eligible to go. It is having an impact on people. And that creates issues for our economy, but also just on our way of life.

JOURNALIST: Given that the national quarantine programs that have been talked about now aren't going to be up and running largely until next year, doesn't that strengthen the argument for there to be some sort of national uniformity?

ALBANESE: Of course.

JOURNALIST: Shouldn't we know how we live our lives, what the restrictions might be and what conditions we're going to be living in?

ALBANESE: Of course, there should be a more national approach to it. But we have a Prime Minister who doesn't want to take responsibility, just wants to shift blame. And the one thing he was responsible for, the rollout of the vaccine, has been a debacle. Thanks.

ENDS