SUBJECTS: COVID restrictions across the country; National Cabinet meeting; vaccine rollout; national quarantine; Morrison Government failing Australians during a health pandemic; car park rorts; infrastructure.

ANTHONY ALBANESE, LEADER OF THE AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY: Thanks very much. And I begin by saying that this morning I was given the great honour of cleaning the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Australian War Memorial. And I thank Matt and the team at the Australian War Memorial for giving me this honour. It is a very humbling experience and it is one that I will forever remember.

I do think that now we have seen a substantial expansion of lockdown. We have New South Wales, large parts of Queensland, Perth, of course, all locked down, as well as the city of Darwin. So we are pretty close to nearing half of Australia’s population either locked down or certainly undertaking restrictions which are there. Can I say that overnight some 67,000 people in New South Wales undertook COVID tests. That is a very high figure, and I am very proud of that. Australians are continuing to make sacrifices and to do the right thing. And I applaud their efforts as well as the efforts of those people in the health sector who are dealing with this ongoing crisis. Last night, we had some announcements from the National Cabinet process. Let me make it clear, Labor supports anything that speeds up the rollout. But let me also say this, Scott Morrison had two jobs this year. They were the effective rollout of the vaccine and national quarantine. And we have failed on both. The figures are there for all to see, some 4.7 per cent of Australians are fully vaccinated, the lowest of any country in the OECD. I think Joe Hockey, the former Treasurer, called it out where he, in response to a tweet from a journalist from The Australian, said with regard to the graph, ‘It says it all’. And indeed, it does. It says it all about a Government that talked a big game but has failed to deliver on its own commitment. A Government that said we're at the front of the queue, whereas the graphs and the figures show that we're way, way behind when it comes to the rollout of the vaccine. A Government that said it wasn't a race. We know it is a race. And those businesses that are losing the figures, we will see at the end of the process. But what we know is that these lockdowns will cost the economy billions of dollars. And we know that means jobs. And that means economic activity. And for many workers who are casuals, they're being laid off and losing their income. This has been a race. And Scott Morrison was caught stuck in the barrier and failing to jump unlike other countries that have jumped further ahead, as we see in the figures that have been released by the OECD. I'm happy to take questions.

JOURNALIST: Gladys Berejiklian said that until we reach an 80 per cent vaccination rate, we can’t even talk about COVID normal. Is that a level you will agree with if this becomes your responsibility after the next election?

ALBANESE: Well, I'll be listening to the health experts and the figures that they define. But let me say this, Australia does have a proud record of high vaccination rates. When it comes to infant vaccinations, for example, we reach above 90 per cent. So there's no reason at all why if Australians are given the opportunity to get vaccinated, they'll take up that opportunity. The problem has been supply, as Gladys Berejiklian has pointed out. The problem has also been due to a lack of supply, people have been trying to log on to get an appointment and haven't been able to. The decision re aged care workers for example, it's a good thing that aged care workers get vaccinated. It's a pity that many of them haven't been able to. They were supposed to be in the category that made vaccinations available, along with aged care residents and disability care workers, by Easter. We're now one day off the end of the financial year and we still know that the figures are very low for aged care workers who've been vaccinated. That's not their fault. It's a fault of a failure of the system to provide them with that opportunity.

JOURNALIST: The Victorian and Queensland premiers are calling for a pause or a reduction in overseas returnees. Would you support that, or do you think we do owe people the chance to get home?

ALBANESE: Scott Morrison said that all Australians would be home by Christmas. Scott Morrison has failed to put in place a national quarantine system whereby people could be got home and got home safely. This shouldn't be a matter for premiers and chief ministers. In this place there used to be a bit of a slogan that one of Scott Morrison's predecessors had about who decides who comes to Australia. This Government's walked away from its obligations to Australians who have been stranded overseas. And it's walked away from its obligations to fix the national quarantine system.

JOURNALIST: The two premiers are calling for a significant reduction in the overseas arrivals cap. Do you endorse their position?

ALBANESE: I endorse the need for a national quarantine system to get people home safely. And I'm not surprised that the premiers who've been lumped with what is a clear national responsibility are saying that. In what world is immigration, customs and quarantine the responsibility of premiers and chief ministers? Not in Australia.

JOURNALIST: Based on the situation we are in now and the quarantine system we have now, you say it's a Federal responsibility. As the Federal Opposition, do you think we should lower the number of international arrivals now or not?

ALBANESE: I think we should fix national quarantine now. I think that the Government should have put this in place for a long period of time. This isn't something that we've said this week or this month. We've been saying it day after day, week after week, month after month, for a year we've been talking about getting this right. We were talking about bringing Australians home. And it's no wonder that Australians who are stranded overseas have a look at this Prime Minister and wonder how it is that they can't get home at a time when it is necessary. I think that quarantine facilities need to be kept safe. This is a Government that, only last week, finally relented and did it by sending out a very brief letter to a couple of the premiers in Queensland and Western Australia and basically doing a drop to the newspapers, as is the style of this Government that's all about politics, not about substance, all about passing off responsibility to the states, not about taking on its responsibilities. And the Federal Government is surely responsible for these issues.

JOURNALIST: Should the Federal Government be in the business of funding dressing rooms and car parks around Australia or should that be given, what we've seen over the past, should that be left to state and local governments?

ALBANESE: Well, this Federal Government, with regard to this car park debacle, let's be very clear, this scandal has everything. Ineligible projects, projects being funded without actually being delivered, the political targeting of projects, and spreadsheets between the Prime Minister's office and the Minister's office. Of this program, there are just two of these car parks have been completed. Just two. And yet what we have is a Government that can't run a public information campaign to support the vaccine rollout, but they have rolled out an advertising campaign for infrastructure projects like this using figures that bear no resemblance to actual infrastructure investment on the ground. And what's more, they're rolling it out in different languages. I've seen overnight at least a couple of the ads in community languages going out to people, misleading them, at the same time as they can't get a public information campaign out in community languages to improve the take-up of the vaccine and to improve safety with regard to the pandemic. This is a Government that got all its priorities wrong. And this program is, quite frankly, a total disgrace. And it's exactly why we need a National Integrity Commission for this Government that is addicted to rorting taxpayer funds. And that's what this is, and that is what essentially the Audit Office have found, that this is an absolute rorting of funds for political purposes. And what's more, for those communities who are stuck in traffic, who have to park, some of them at places like Schofields in north-western Sydney, they have to park sometimes a couple of kilometres away from the train station because all the car park spots fill up by 6:30am in the morning. So they haven't got facilities. And others, of course, have been promised it as well, knowing that there weren't actually anywhere for the car parks to actually be built. This is all about this Government's so-called farcical program on infrastructure, whereby we have a trillion dollars of debt and we have no major new infrastructure projects to show for it.

JOURNALIST: Can I get your thoughts on the Deputy Prime Minister admitting that he has been fined $200 for not wearing a mask in regional New South Wales?

ALBANESE: Well, everyone should be doing the right thing. I'm not aware of specific circumstances of individuals. But it's incumbent on all of us to follow the procedures that have been put in place.

JOURNALIST: Just on the car park program, is it time to rethink how these programs are used and should we remove ministers and MPs from the decision-making process as it's just too much of a lure to misuse it for political purposes?

ALBANESE: Well, I have run an infrastructure program. And I note Daniel Andrews on his first day back to work yesterday was at Melbourne Metro, not Marrickville Metro. They have a good bathroom at Marrickville Metro. Melbourne Metro, which is the largest project of its kind in the country. It will substantially increase the capacity of the rail network in Melbourne. We had $3 billion of Commonwealth money for that project. We had a Commonwealth official as a member of the board of the Melbourne Metro Project, just like we funded Cross River Rail. And that funding was all cut by this Government when it came to office. The Government ripped out $3 billion from Melbourne Metro and ripped out billions of dollars from the Cross River Rail Project. Melbourne Metro eventually went ahead with the leadership of the Andrews Government. But they withdrew support from major productivity boosting projects in order to fund projects based upon politics, these small projects.

JOURNALIST: Should MPs have a role in defining how taxpayer money is spent?

ALBANESE: What you need to do is establish processes like Infrastructure Australia to recommend productivity boosting projects. And that needs to be the priority. When it comes to smaller projects, we have with the Regional Local Community Infrastructure Program, we funded projects through local government based upon the local government priorities which were there. So we had accountability through audit processes there at the local government area. They made sure that they went through processes. So there were some car parks funded in places like Cabramatta, in places like Penrith, in places like Bankstown. You'll note Cabramatta, for example, is not a marginal seat. It's an area where there was massive congestion. And that was the priority of the local council. So the local community got that input into the process because they could apply to just one based upon their priorities. We had a process that had integrity. This Government has no integrity. This Government just throws it all out the window, thinks it's okay for this to continue. And I'll make this point. In the Budget of just last month, they created 21 separate pots of money in order to pork barrel between now and the next Federal election. They also put $9 billion into funding that was decisions taken but not announced. We wonder what they are as well. This is a Government that thinks that taxpayers' money is its own money.

JOURNALIST: Just back on COVID, Senator Rex Patrick has called for a Royal Commission into COVID. Do you think that is necessary either now or down the track?

ALBANESE: Well, let's get through it. Let's get through it.

JOURNALIST: What about the concept of it?

ALBANESE: Let's get through it. People are locked down now. People can't get around. They can't take their kids to school. They can't go about their daily lives. Let's get through this. Inevitably, when you get to the end of processes, there's a need to examine things. But now is not the time. Now is the time to get it right. Now's the time for this Government to do the four things that we said it should do. Roll out the vaccine, national quarantine, an effective public information campaign and manufacture mRNA vaccines here.

JOURNALIST: (Inaudible). What have they done right in your view?

ALBANESE: Well, I think that the idea at the beginning that you bring together the Commonwealth and state premiers and chief ministers is a good one. The problem here is that we haven't had consistency of national decision making as a result of that, because the Government has preferred to give responsibility to state premiers because then it can blame state premiers. We look at what the Commonwealth has taken responsibility for. Remember the app, the COVID-Safe app? I don't know anyone who's used that or who looks at it these days. It failed. It then took responsibility for the rollout of the vaccine. And quite frankly, that is a failure. And to quote Joe Hockey, the figures say it all. And then of course, it has continued to abrogate its responsibility on national quarantine. There's a defining characteristic of this Prime Minister, which is that he waits until there's an absolute crisis and then acts because of political pressure. Whether it's the bushfires response, whether it be the need for wage subsidies in response to the pandemic, whether it be the rollout of the vaccine, or indeed the changes that were announced last night, they are all much later than they should have been and it's only as a result of political pressure. This Prime Minister never shows leadership. And that is something that we see from him as a defining characteristic. And I think that Australians are coming to realise that.

JOURNALIST: Would you be encouraging people under the age of 40 to go and get the AstraZeneca vaccine, given all the different warnings we have received over this?

ALBANESE: People will make their own decisions based upon the health advice of their experts. People should talk to their doctors. Politicians shouldn't be the ones giving health advice. Medical experts should. Thanks very much.

ENDS