SUBJECTS: Visit to WA; manufacturing sector; Labor’s National Reconstruction Fund; importance of manufacturing in the regions; Christine Holgate; Australia Post; Menulog; gig workers; Scott Morrison’s lack of presence in Western Australia; importance of WA in federal politics; ex-tropical cyclone Seroja; vaccine rollout; gas; WA Labor; Andrew Laming. 

DR ANNE ALY, MEMBER FOR COWAN: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Adarsh Australia. They are a very local manufacturing organisation that I am very proud to have in Cowan. They take a lot of apprentices here in Cowan and are a true asset to the northern suburbs. In the northern suburbs, there are 54,000 jobs, or thereabouts. There are 120,000 people who work, of working age. So that means that less than one in two people, or around one in two people, in the northern suburbs actually work in the northern suburbs. I have a vision for the northern suburbs and that is to create a place where people can live, play and work. To create jobs in the northern suburbs so that people can work where they live. And I am really proud that Anthony Albanese is here again in Western Australia again this year, for the second time this year, supporting jobs in the northern suburbs, supporting jobs for regional Australians. So I am going to hand over to Anthony now. He has just had a tour of Adarsh and has seen the wonderful work that they do here. And I will get him to talk more about pressing the go button while he was here. Anthony?

ANTHONY ALBANESE, LEADER OF THE AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY: Well, thanks very much, Anne. And thank you to Adarsh Australia for the welcome to this important manufacturing facility that is here supporting Australian jobs and Australian skills. Adarsh employs some 80 people across three sites and are looking at further expansions. And what we need is an Australian Government that is committed to manufacturing things here. During the pandemic, Australia’s lack of self-reliance has been exposed. The fact is that we need to make more things here, supporting Australian jobs, supporting the Australian economy, with Australian skills. And we can do it. And this site shows us that. Labor has announced a $15 billion National Reconstruction Fund. What that would do is support Australian businesses to invest here in increasing their capacity and also to support creating new Australian businesses. We need to do that. We also need to make sure that we have procurement here, that when the Australian Government invests money, it should create Australian jobs right here. And that is not that hard to do. We need to make sure, as well, that we train Australian apprentices for those Australian jobs. They are all a good way to go in terms of building back better from the pandemic. We need to not just go back to what was there, but we need to build back even stronger, better, and have a more resilient economy. 

Can I say also on two other issues, that the evidence of Christine Holgate at the Australia Post inquiry today is damning of the Government. This is someone who lost her job at the same time as Government ministers and Government Members of Parliament are allowed to keep their jobs. The biggest indictment, of course, is over Andrew Laming, who remains a member of the Liberal National Party, sitting in the National Parliament. Christine Holgate also gave evidence that the Government has a plan to get rid of 5,000 jobs at Australia Post that she was resisting. Now, that is a secret plan, it is about cutting services back further for Australian consumers for what is a vital national government industry in Australia Post. And I think that her evidence that she was bullied out of her job as CEO of Australia Post, at a time where Scott Morrison has said she voluntarily left, Scott Morrison needs to realise that Hansard reports what happens in Parliament and it is also recorded on video. And we know that Scott Morrison during Question Time effectively sacked Christine Holgate from her job. You can do whatever you like as a Government minister in Scott Morrison's Government and you get to keep your job. But if you are Christine Holgate, you get treated very differently. And her evidence today is damning. 

The third issue again goes to a failure with the Morrison Government which is the announcement by Menulog that I welcome that they will seek to move people from being just contractors into being employees with that employee relationship and that they will make an application before the Fair Work Commission to work with the Transport Workers' Union to make sure that their employees can actually get decent wages and proper conditions. Now this is a major breakthrough. When we raised this in my industrial relations speech earlier this year outlining our policies to include gig workers, a growing part of our economy, as part of our industrial relations system, to give them more security at work, to make sure they're paid at least the minimum wage, Christian Porter said it was all too hard, it was all too complicated. Well what Menulog's response shows is that it is not complicated. That with a bit of goodwill, it can be achieved. And here you have a circumstance whereby a major corporation is prepared to do that. I call upon consumers to back Menulog against their competitors. That is something that the ACTU have called for. We need to support businesses that are doing the right thing. Because we know that there's actually been a catastrophic loss of life for people who are engaged in this sort of work. The loss of five lives around Australia towards the end of last year from people who were cycling, delivering food to clients. So this shows that once again, with a bit of goodwill and a bit of leadership, something that's really lacking from this Government across the board, whether it's manufacturing, whether it's looking after existing employees, or whether it be responding to the changing nature of our economy. Happy to take questions.

JOURNALIST: (Inaudible). But do you acknowledge that Labor played a key role?

ALBANESE: I'm not quite sure how you can argue that's the case.

JOURNALIST: Kimberley Kitching was who asked about the Cartier watches (inaudible)?

ALBANESE: No, I regarded the Australia Post board's position and what they did, I did regard the Cartier watches as being inappropriate. But the fact is that it was Scott Morrison who stood up in Parliament and actually, for a change, made a strong decision. He made a decision on the spot and he said that she could go from her position. It is appropriate that Labor Senators asks questions about the use of taxpayer funds. But this was, as Christine Holgate has outlined, a decision that was approved in terms of by board members. The watches concerned went with a card with a handwritten note from the Australia Post board. So the fact is that this Government was very quick to act there. This is a Government that will have Christian Porter sitting in the front row in the Parliament when it resumes as a Cabinet Minister, even though we know there have been further questions raised about the failure to have a proper investigation into the allegations that were made there. This is a Government that will have Senator Reynolds sitting in a Cabinet spot in the Senate when Parliament resumes, even though she referred to Brittany Higgins as a ‘lying cow’. This is a Government that has promoted Stuart Robert with all of his history. Someone who has Angus Taylor still sitting in the Cabinet. The fact of the matter is if you are a Cabinet Minister in Scott Morrison's Government, you can do whatever you like. And that contrasts with the actions against Christine Holgate.

JOURNALIST: Scott Morrison hasn’t been here since 2019. Why do you think he has decided that now is the right time to visit?

ALBANESE: He probably should be embarrassed that it's been well over 500 days since he's been here in Western Australia. I've just come from Karratha where I was yesterday. And I was here in Perth on Sunday and I will be here again tomorrow. This is my second visit this year. But I also came a number of times, at least three times, in 2020 before the lockdowns occurred and was here once a month in 2019, was here more than 10 times in 2019. This is a big country. And to understand Western Australia, you've got to come, and you've got to talk with people here. Whether they be businesses, like Adarsh that we are with today, or whether it be people that we were with yesterday in Karratha talking with the resources sector, talking with First Nations people, talking at events in regional WA. I intend to be a regular visitor here in Western Australia. I find it extraordinary that Scott Morrison hasn't been here for such a long period of time, back to really mid-2019. But I intend to not take Western Australia for granted. I have very good members here like Anne. But what I want is to match the quality that I see here with quantity after the next election. We will be campaigning each and every day to make sure that happens.

JOURNALIST: (Inaudible). How important is WA for that next election in making any inroads?

ALBANESE: Well, I think Western Australians are very open to voting Labor. They showed that with the overwhelming mandate that they've given to Mark McGowan and his Government. I've known Mark a long time. We have very similar political views. And I take his advice very seriously and I take the advice of my Federal team here very seriously as well. I have good relations with the business community here in the West. I have good relations with the Labor movement here in the West as well. I intend to build on that. I'll be at both ABC and at 6PR, happy to take questions from listeners. Scott Morrison doesn't do that. He doesn't even give press conferences these days. We've now had a major health announcement done through Facebook yesterday. Quite extraordinary that the Government and Scott Morrison is removing himself from any scrutiny after he said, ‘Do not take your advice from Facebook when it comes to the pandemic’, he is now giving advice on Facebook. The two things can't be right. And that is just another example of where Scott Morrison is failing. I think Western Australians will also say that the Western Australian Government under Mark McGowan has kept them safe during the pandemic. They have been responsible largely for all of the action that's been taken has been handed over to the state governments. Scott Morrison had one job, which was to get the rollout of the vaccine right. And it is a shambles. A shambles whereby now he is saying that they won't even have a timeline or a target for when people will be vaccinated. That will provide uncertainty, not just for individuals here in Western Australia, but for business who will not know when they can open up, for universities that have had a devastating loss in their income. The West, located with it is, close to India, close to our Indian Ocean and Asian markets, is so important. And the fact that there's no timeline being given by Scott Morrison just shows an absolute failure when it comes to delivery. And one of the things that defines Scott Morrison's Government is the gap that's there between announcement and delivery. He makes announcements and then that's job done. Doesn't worry about whether it actually happens or not.

JOURNALIST: Have you met with the Premier while you have been here?

ALBANESE: Yeah, I met with him on Sunday. I spent a lot of time with him on Sunday. We had a very good chat. We head an event with, I think there were 500 RSVPs, but about 700 people showed up at the Mess Hall in Perth. I even pulled a beer with the Premier on Sunday. It was great to spend time with him and with many of the new Members of Parliament who have been elected as well. Whenever I come to Western Australia, I always try to catch up with Mark. And when I'm not here, we're often chatting on the phone.

JOURNALIST: (Inaudible).

ALBANESE: Look, that was organised well in advance. And the fact is that our thoughts are certainly with the people of Kalbarri. They've gone through incredible hardship with the cyclone. And their loss of property is substantial. The good news is that they've not lost a life. That is always really important. I know that when I was in Karratha last night, and yesterday as well, they, of course, missed out on the impact. And for the communities who, many of whom remain without power, certainly it was first and foremost the thing that the Premier mentioned at the event on Sunday.

JOURNALIST: (Inaudible).

ALBANESE: It's not surprising given the confused information that's come out from the Government. I mean, why it is that the Government held a press conference on Thursday night after the TV news on the East Coast had gone to air and then, yesterday, making a major announcement through Facebook rather than through a transparent way in which questions could be answered? This is a Government that isn't telling people how many people have been vaccinated with Pfizer or with AstraZeneca. GPs don't know when they're getting the vaccine and how many. We have people with disabilities who should have been included in the first wave of people getting access to a vaccine that haven't been getting it. We have people working in the aged care sector, essential workers, who are being told that now they're not being given the vaccine by the Commonwealth, they have to just go to their GP. This Government needs to get its act together. The information needs to be clear and transparent. And I think that the decision by the Government to walk away from that transparency is a major issue.

JOURNALIST: (Inaudible). Is that a sensible decision?

ALBANESE: Well, what I don't think is a sensible decision is the reliance on AstraZeneca, putting all their eggs in that basket and the chickens have come home to roost. That isn't something that we're saying today. If you look at my transcripts and the transcripts of Mark Butler and before him Chris Bowen, we have been saying it almost every day for a year that there was a need to make sure that you mitigate risk, just like any business does, by in this case world's best practice was to have access to five or six vaccines. Moderna is being rolled out in North America and in Europe. In the UK, for example, which has halted the AstraZeneca vaccine going to some cohorts in their community, they've been able to substitute Moderna very easily. But we were told last year that Australia was at the front of the queue. And we know now that Australia is struggling to get into the top 100 in terms of the rollout of the vaccine. We were told that four million Australians would be vaccinated by March. And we know that they've just tipped over one million and we're now in the middle of April. And we were told that everyone would get vaccinated by October. They then changed that to say that they'd get the first jab. And we know now that the timeline's been abandoned completely. I mean, the only jab that's been delivered successfully by Scott Morrison was the jab to get rid of Malcolm Turnbull when he removed him from the Prime Ministership. That is the only time he's been focused on an outcome. And during that week he was very focused on that outcome of getting the top job. The problem is, he hasn't known what to do with it once he's had it. And when you look at, whether it be the rollout of the vaccine or whether it be the response to the bushfires, one of the things about Scott Morrison is that, he doesn't hold a hose, is what he said. He also now doesn't hold a timeline. And now he doesn't hold press conferences either. Thanks very much.

ENDS