SUBJECTS: Sydney COVID lockdown; COVID restrictions across the country; National Cabinet meeting; vaccine rollout; national quarantine; Morrison Government failing Australians during a health pandemic; need for national standards during a pandemic; income support; Government’s Cabinet reshuffle; climate change policies; Daniel Andrews returning to work.

ANTHONY ALBANESE, LEADER OF THE AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY: Thanks very much for joining us. Our thoughts are today with all those right around Australia who are struggling with the lockdowns and the restrictions on their everyday activity. I say to them: stay safe. We will get through this. We got through these issues before. But make sure you follow the advice which is out there in your respective state and territory. Scott Morrison had two jobs this year. He had to effectively roll out the vaccine and he had to implement a system of national quarantine. He's failed both. And at the special National Cabinet being held today, he's got to accept some responsibility rather than just hand off responsibility to the states and territories. He needs to clearly outline how we can increase the vaccination rate and how we can, in particular, make sure we overcome the challenges which are there that have been identified for such a long period of time, upping the vaccination rates of all Australians, but in particular making sure that people who are essential workers are able to be vaccinated. It's quite absurd that this outbreak in Sydney began with someone driving foreign workers, who had come in by aircraft, to a quarantine centre without a mask, because that wasn't mandated and without being vaccinated, because that hadn't been looked after either. The fact is that if advice had have been taken, this Morrison lockdown could have been avoided. And now we see the consequences not just for New South Wales, but for the entire country.

MARK BUTLER, SHADOW MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGEING: Thanks, Anthony. Well, today, millions of Australians are locked down. Millions more have had their school holidays and their lives disrupted through all of the restrictions that we're seeing in place in pretty much every jurisdiction in Australia. And this is all a result of Scott Morrison's failure to do his job. He has left Australians dangerously exposed through his stubborn incompetence. I want to say a few things about the briefings that the Prime Minister is giving about the National Cabinet agenda this afternoon or this evening. The things he is talking about are jobs he should already have completed. He's talking about vaccination of aged care staff; I will come to that in a sec. He's talking about standards in hotel quarantine. Now, we've been saying for months that following Jane Halton’s report to him last year, there should be national standards in place for hotel quarantine. Standards around ventilation, around personal protective equipment for anyone working in hotel quarantine and making sure that any staff associated with quarantine arrangements is vaccinated. And in spite of those calls, going back to Halton’s report from last year, Scott Morrison has done nothing to improve standards in hotel quarantine. He's relying on a system built for tourism, not for medical quarantine, and refusing to put in place national standards that at least would provide some protection. And as a result, already this month, we have seen five breaches, five outbreaks from hotel quarantine. These are becoming more frequent, not less because we're dealing with more infectious variants. 

Now, going to the second thing that the Prime Minister says he'll be discussing with premiers this afternoon, the vaccination of aged care staff. More than three weeks ago, Scott Morrison said that National Cabinet had requested an urgent report from the chief medical officers about vaccinating aged care workers. And still, we have nothing. Last week's National Cabinet apparently said nothing about mandatory vaccination for aged care staff. And still, we don't know how that would happen as a matter of practicality. It makes a lot of sense, in Labor's view, to have vaccination for all aged care staff. We know through tragic experience from last year that 84 per cent of residents of aged care facilities who caught COVID-19 caught it through aged care staff, for obvious reasons, no one else was able to visit their facilities. So having a system of mandatory vaccination does make sense. But where's the public health advice that was requested more than three weeks ago? And how are those couple of hundred thousand aged care workers who are not currently vaccinated going to get a vaccine? The New South Wales Premier this morning expressed her frustration at the slow supply of vaccines. We learned last week that only one in six aged care workers currently is fully vaccinated. The Prime Minister promised that there would be pop-up clinics across the country dedicated to aged care staff. He promised that by the end of May. And still, there are only three of those clinics and they're all operating in Sydney. Three of the 13 that were promised by the end of May. He also promised that there would be staff contracted by the Commonwealth to go into aged care facilities. That tender doesn't close till the end of July. We will be well through winter by the time those operations are ready to get up and going. Also, he says he wants to discuss with National Cabinet the vaccination of other frontline and quarantine staff. Well as Anthony just said, this Sydney outbreak is a result of a driver who reportedly was driving foreign aircrew without a mask and without vaccination. This again was something Jane Halton warned Scott Morrison about as far back as last year. She said this was a potential hole. She said it should be a high priority. And in response, Scott Morrison did absolutely nothing. Which is why I say again, this Sydney outbreak is Scott Morrison's outbreak.

ALBANESE: Happy to take questions on this, firstly.

JOURNALIST: The Queensland Premier has today said that she wants international caps reduced at the moment due to the outbreaks. Is that something you support?

ALBANESE: Well, what the Queensland Premier has always understood, unlike Scott Morrison, is that this is a race. This is a race to get people vaccinated, it is a race also to set up national quarantine facilities. And I can understand the Queensland Premier’s frustration given that she presented to the Federal Government a proposal for purpose-built facilities as far back as last October, and that was rejected by the Federal Government. The issue of people coming into Australia and having appropriate quarantine facilities is one that the states have been left to deal with because of the Federal Government walking away from their responsibilities. And Scott Morrison has to accept responsibility. I've said before that it is beyond comprehension that somehow the states are responsible for migration numbers, for customs and for quarantine. They're all Federal Government responsibilities. So I'm not surprised that Premier Palaszczuk is once again showing leadership in the absence of leadership from the Commonwealth. 

JOURNALIST: My question is whether you would support what she's saying, to reduce the international caps at the moment because of the COVID-19.

ALBANESE: The premise of your question is that it is Premier Palaszczuk’s responsibility. That's the premise, I'm rejecting the very premise of your question and the premise of the system that's been established. What we need is to have national quarantine facilities. What we need is for the Federal Government to assume its responsibility which is there. And it's unfortunate that premiers have been put in this case. I certainly understand Premier Palaszczuk’s response. And it's not surprising given the failure that is there to set up appropriate quarantine facilities, the failure that's there, as well, to put in place, as Mark has said, the appropriate mechanisms for arrival of foreign aircrew and arrival of others into Australia, which is surely a Federal Government responsibility.

JOURNALIST: Speaking of Federal Government responsibilities, the Northern Territory outbreak started because of a miner who was in quarantine in Queensland, and a domestic quarantine was next to international traveller’s room with the Delta strain of the virus. Now, National Cabinet is looking at banning housing low-risk and higher risk people in quarantine next to each other. I mean, shouldn't they have looked at this a long time ago?

ALBANESE: The Federal Government should have looked at national quarantine facilities that were purpose-built, such as that exists in the Northern Territory, a long time ago. And we've been saying that day after day, week after week, month after month. We've been saying this is a race. The Prime Minister has been saying, ‘it's not a race, there's no need to rush things here’. Quite clearly, we're seeing the consequences of that.

JOURNALIST: What about enforcing those national standards?

BUTLER: I mean, the first challenge is there haven't been those national standards in place. We've been calling for those standards to be in place, as have a range of other experts for months and months now. We know through bitter experience that there is room-to-room transmission within hotels because these rooms are built for tourism, not medical quarantine. There's been experience of that now in every single jurisdiction. You've seen transmission from room-to-room, which is why we and many other experts have argued for strong ventilation standards to be driven from the national Government across the National Cabinet. That's what National Cabinet was apparently set up to do. So a whole range of standards, ventilation, the use of PPE within these hotels, and things like the co-location of domestic quarantine with people of international arrivals is obviously something the Prime Minister should have been thinking about months ago.

ALBANESE: One of the very benefits that have been seen from Howard Springs, and we should be learning from experience during this pandemic, is that Howard Springs works because they have stand-alone facilities. Because the food is delivered there in two lots because you don't have person-to-person contact either with the staff who work at the centre or between the people who are staying there during the quarantine period. That's best practice. Labor has been calling for best practice to be learned from and then expanded and replicated. The Federal Government has been saying it's not a race, no need to worry about hotel quarantine. The Prime Minister in this chamber, about 50 metres away from where we stand now, has stood up time after time and said, ‘the quarantine system is absolutely the best, it's 99.9 per cent effective’, ignoring the fact that there have been now 26 breaches from hotel quarantine on the Prime Minister's watch. And every single one of them has had consequences. And the current crisis can be directly related to a failure of the Federal Government to listen to the advice that was given, including by Jane Halton and the report which it received last year.

JOURNALIST: Given the experience of the Delta strain among young people, it makes young people a lot more sick, is it time that Labor should be calling on the Federal Government to open up the vaccinations for people aged under 40 right now?

BUTLER: Well, the challenge the country has right now is that those people who have been identified by the public health experts as the most vulnerable in our community, particularly older Australians, there are still more than 20,000 residents of aged care facilities who have only received one dose of vaccine, and as I said, five out of every six of their care staff are still not fully vaccinated. So we think that still the priority of Scott Morrison should be to make sure that the most vulnerable in our community are fully vaccinated as soon as possible. But the rest of the population want access to vaccines as well. That's what Gladys Berejiklian was saying only this morning. New South Wales going through this lockdown with millions of people confined to their home want to be able to get vaccinated, but they can't because there's simply not enough supply being given to them by Scott Morrison. So yes, people want to get a move on here. Australia is running last in terms of two doses of the vaccine in the OECD. 4 per cent of the population has been able to get access to vaccines. And that's not because people don't want it, it's because Scott Morrison is not giving it to them. 

JOURNALIST: Do you believe National Cabinet is an effective form of crisis management?

ALBANESE: I've commented on this before. It's important that the Commonwealth have relationships with the state and territories and there be a cooperation on this. The issue is whether you have consistency as a result of those National Cabinet meetings or not. And what we've had is since very early on, from the Sunday when Gladys Berejiklian and Daniel Andrews had different positions to the Commonwealth when it came to schools, we've seen largely state premiers report what was going on in their respective states and the Prime Minister then hold a press conference afterwards.

JOURNALIST: Just a question on income support. So, at the moment there are thousands of people in Canberra alone who are in isolation having returned from Sydney. Now, they're ineligible for the Commonwealth disaster payment because they're not currently in a Commonwealth-declared hotspot. Andrew Barr, the ACT Chief Minister, thinks that is unfair. Do you think the eligibility criteria for that should be expanded?

ALBANESE: Well, this is a direct result, these restrictions and lockdowns, is a direct result of failure when it comes to dealing with this crisis by the Commonwealth. And therefore, the Commonwealth has responsibilities to look after people whose income has been affected.

JOURNALIST: What percentage of Australians would need to be vaccinated before the nation can stop needing to go into lockdown?

ALBANESE: We take the medical advice on those matters very clearly. But Australia has historically been able to have high immunisation rates. We are able to immunise over 90 per cent of our infants. That's a good thing. The problem here is one of supply. People right now in my electorate, who are locked down, are registering and trying to get access to the vaccine. And what they get told is they get given a number and they get told that an appointment isn't available. That's what's happening right now to people who are on the list as being eligible to be vaccinated. The supply isn't there. They can't get appointments. 

JOURNALIST: Just on a slightly different topic in terms of the Cabinet changes, what do you think of demoting mining from Cabinet? Is this good for climate change?

ALBANESE: Look, the fact is that this Barnaby Joyce reshuffle shows, I think, how obsessed this Government is. During a pandemic that we've just been talking about, their focus has just been on making transactional deals over positions in Cabinet, over whether portfolio positions will sit in Cabinet, including Resources and Water, rather than being concerned with the interests of the nation. It's all about their internal politics and their internal dynamic. This is a Government that's about serving its own interest, not about serving the interests of the national people. And the national interest should be put first. And I note Darren Chester's comments this morning. Anyone who suggests that Andrew Gee is a more worthy person to be Veterans' Affairs Minister then someone who's been very passionate, I've had my differences with Minister Chester, I was calling for a Royal Commission into veteran suicide well before the Government eventually adopted it, but I haven't questioned at any stage his commitment to looking after the welfare of veterans. The fact that he's been dumped as a result of a deal for a bloke who apparently was a junior minister, but no one would have noticed that before his promotion into the Cabinet today. The fact that Resources is out of the Cabinet, Water is out of the Cabinet, as payback for Keith Pitt in order to promote others. And it says everything about this Government's attitude towards integrity. That someone who does have integrity like Darren Chester will be sitting on the backbench next to Michael McCormack. And Bridget McKenzie, who was responsible for the Sports Rorts saga and had to resign from the frontbench just a short time ago, has been returned to Cabinet with this rather bizarre portfolio, making up a sort of title. And then that someone else has been appointed an envoy. Like, that's just a rort to increase someone's salary and resources to make up a title. We have ministers in this country. We now have assistant ministers, which used to be called parliamentary secretaries, in order to change the grandness of their title. And now we have envoys somehow because Barnaby Joyce had to do more deals than there were positions available in order to become Deputy Prime Minister of the country. And what does Scott Morrison do as the Prime Minister? He says, 'No worries, I'll just go along with that. I'll dump Resources from around the Cabinet table, I'll dump Water from around the Cabinet table, I'll fill these positions and call someone an envoy, whatever that means'. Barnaby Joyce was an envoy in order to keep him quiet before the last election. He got paid a bit of money. He had a lot more resources and additional staff. And all he could produce was a couple of text messages to the Minister. We've never seen a report that he did. This is a farce. And it shows this Government is all about itself, not about the interests of Australia. 

JOURNALIST: (Inaudible). Do you think this will have any material change on the presence or lack thereof of climate policies? 

ALBANESE: Well, if you're not around the Cabinet table, you're not a part of discussions on legislation and on a way forward for the country. And it is quite extraordinary that Resources is not a Cabinet position. It certainly is in my Shadow Cabinet. Madeleine King brings that perspective, and from the great resources state of Western Australia. We were due to have a shadow ministry in Port Hedland tomorrow. For obvious reasons, that hasn't been able to go ahead. I would have been in Port Hedland this afternoon. If you look at the wealth that goes out of, particularly with the iron ore exports, out of Port Hedland, that wealth produces money that then goes into education and health and into the national economy. It's extraordinary that this Government is so arrogant, that it thinks that doesn't matter and it'll all just look after itself and we won't bother having it in the Cabinet.

JOURNALIST: (Inaudible).

ALBANESE: Well, Josh Frydenberg has presided over the second highest taxing Government in Australia's history. The highest taxing Government in Australian history is John Howard's. It's one of the great truisms of Australian politics. And when it comes to the Intergenerational Report, what it indicates today is that over the next 40 years, our economy will be smaller than expected, growing slower, with 40 plus years of debt and deficits into the future, as far as the eye can see. There's no productivity agenda, of course, from this Government. Productivity was going backwards prior to the pandemic. And this report just highlights a very negative position that this Government has presided over before the pandemic. And the pandemic, of course, has accentuated some of the weaknesses in the economy that was there well before.

JOURNALIST: Do you think it's just a reality that Australians will have to pay more out of their pockets?

ALBANESE: Well, what we need is a Government that has a plan for the future. I've outlined measures to make sure that we grow back stronger after the pandemic, that we learn the lessons, that we create jobs of the future, that we invest in the future. So through measures that we have in place, such as our National Reconstruction Fund, the creation of Jobs and Skills Australia to identify where their skills will be needed and to make sure Australians are trained for it, dealing with the opportunities that are there from becoming a renewable energy superpower as we deal with climate change. This Government has no positive plan going forward. They didn't have one prior to the pandemic. And they still don't have one now.

If I can just make one last comment before we conclude, I think everyone's had a fair crack. I just want to say welcome back to Daniel Andrews. He is my friend. I've been speaking to him while he's been going through his recovery. It's been a tough time for him and Cath and the kids. And I think that all Australians should wish him well on his return. I think it was appropriate that he'd be there looking at infrastructure. The Melbourne Metro Project is an exciting one. It will boost productivity. There was $3 billion of federal funding in that project that was cut by the first Coalition Budget in 2014. Daniel Andrews understands how to grow an economy, invest in infrastructure and improve the living standards of Victorians. And I very much welcome him back and look forward to working with him well into the future. Thanks very much.

ENDS