SUBJECTS: 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; Intergenerational Report 2021.

KIERAN GILBERT, HOST: The Opposition Leader, Anthony Albanese, is with me in the studio. The Prime Minister has been leading this national discussion through National Cabinet and so on. When we see these outbreaks, do you recognise that it really is within the state and territory jurisdictions where the hiccups are occurring? 

ANTHONY ALBANESE, LEADER OF THE AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY: Well, the failure has occurred through a failure of national leadership, Kieran. All of the outbreaks, including the Northern Territory one of course, comes from a failure of quarantine, hotel quarantine, again, in Brisbane. This is the 26th outbreak that we've seen. We've seen five outbreaks in the last month. And the Prime Minister had two jobs this year: to fix the rollout of the vaccine and to have national quarantine facilities. And he failed on both. And of course, when it comes to national quarantine facilities, we know, ironically there in the Northern Territory, that in the Territory, you have the system that should have been replicated around the country, at Howard Springs. Facilities in which they are standalone, in which you don't have ventilation systems with people who do have COVID staying next door to people who don't have COVID. We know that hotels were built for tourists, they weren't built as medical quarantine. 

GILBERT: But overall, as the Prime Minister would argue, the hotel quarantine approach, compared to a lot of places around the world and how they've struggled, has worked, although with the odd leakage here and there, and they will obviously have damaging consequences, but compared to other nations around the world. Would you accept that, overall, it's been a success?

ALBANESE: Look, Australia has a number of advantages. And one of the advantages we have as an island continent is that we are able to effectively close our borders. And that has meant some positives. But we're not taking advantage of what occurred in 2020 through this complacency, through a Government that has said we are at the front of the queue, remember, when it came to vaccines. And in fact, our vaccination rates are the lowest of any country in the OECD. We're not in the top 100 countries. We still don't have five per cent of our population fully vaccinated. And we're still relying upon this hotel quarantine system, which last Friday, when the Prime Minister dropped out some letters to newspapers about Queensland and Western Australian purpose-built facilities, he was putting his hand up and saying, ‘Yep, we got it wrong, we do need to have purpose-built facilities’. He wasted that long period of time.

GILBERT: I know you want to say it's the Prime Minister's responsibility with every muck-up in this. But quite clearly, the states have got to take some accountability. We've seen that on show recently where you've had domestic travellers in hotels alongside international travellers, so low-risk with high-risk travellers. Then you've got, in New South Wales, a limousine driver, not even being required to, let alone get vaccinated, to wear a mask. 

ALBANESE: Well, it's appalling. But that's a failure, again, of national leadership.

GILBERT: But it was the state's public health orders.

ALBANESE: There was a report from Jane Halton to the Federal Government last year saying you needed to fix up transport, that it was a weakness in the system, that it was an exposure. What we have here is a foreign air crew coming into Australia, being driven by a guy who had no guidelines in terms of wearing a mask. He wasn't vaccinated. And the truth is that the states and territories have been dealing with a lack of supply. Premier Berejiklian has made that very clear, as have other state leaders, that they need more supply. If you're in New South Wales at the moment in my electorate, you're locked down, you're trying to get vaccinated, you're eligible to be vaccinated. When you log on, what you'll get is a number. But you won't be able to get an appointment because there simply isn’t supply available.

GILBERT: Should AstraZeneca be offered to anyone who wants it if they're willing to sign a waiver? 

ALBANESE: Well, the problem here is that there have been changes when it comes to the advice that is there, medical advice. And we need to follow the medical advice.

GILBERT: If you want to say, ‘Give me the jab, I want to be vaccinated’ and they're willing to sign a waiver, why shouldn't they be afforded that? You look in the United Kingdom and people in their 30s and 40s right across the country have been receiving it and with no problem. 

ALBANESE: Well, there simply aren’t enough vaccines out there. And the problem is that the one vaccine that did have some availability in numbers and quantities was AstraZeneca. And there have been issues with it. The Government put all the eggs in the AstraZeneca basket and the chickens have come home to roost. They didn't have a deal signed with Moderna. They didn't get enough Pfizer. They didn't have any process to manufacture mRNA vaccines here in Australia. They didn't have a plan to roll out the vaccine to aged care workers that we know overwhelmingly still haven't been vaccinated. So how is it that 18 months into this pandemic we don't have aged care workers vaccinated, we don't have all aged care residents vaccinated?

GILBERT: Should we have a target, say like other nations have? 

ALBANESE: We did.

GILBERT: Do you think the Government should set a target? What would yours be if you win the election?

ALBANESE: We did have a target, Kieran. We had a target that all essential workers, people in category 1A, aged care residents, aged care workers, disability workers, would all be vaccinated by April, by Easter. And now that, of course, has been given up. We said we'd have four million vaccinated by the end of March. And that didn't happen. The Government gave up on that as well. 

GILBERT: In terms of herd immunity though, Gladys Berejiklian talks about 80 per cent. Is that a figure, 80 per cent of the community, where you would then look to reopening?

ALBANESE: Gladys Berejiklian made the comment today, and I agree with her, that her priority is the immediate crisis that is being dealt with, rather than an aspiration. And indeed, what's extraordinary about last week is that the Government gave up on targets and now they have something called horizons. Now, a horizon is something that you never meet. As you move the horizon moves with you. So the Government is completely giving up on targets. What we say is, we can’t afford to wait till 2022 until we are in Government, with the will of the Australian people, to get this right. It needs to be got right now. The Government needs to acknowledge that it has been complacent, that it hasn't put in place appropriate measures and it hasn't delivered. It hasn't delivered on its targets. And now it's given up on them completely. Surely, we need to make sure that aged care workers, people working with disabilities, people who are transporting foreign aircrew, for goodness’ sake, are fully vaccinate. 

GILBERT: Singapore has got a lot of clarity as to each roadmap to reopen. Would you want to see that sort of specificity, that sort of clarity, to give people a sense of where they're going?

ALBANESE: We of course do need targets. This Government has given up on it and now have horizons, in its own word. And horizons are things that are never reached by definition. And I find that quite extraordinary. And this is a Prime Minister who is characterised by never taking responsibility, never accepting the things that he's responsible for, always looking to pass it off to the states and territories, but always happy to take credit whenever anything goes right. 

GILBERT: Finally, on the Intergenerational Report, I've spoken to Josh Frydenberg about that today. And the huge challenge ahead, largely because of the drop in population projections due to COVID, do you accept there's a day of reckoning coming in terms of reform? 

ALBANESE: Absolutely. 

GILBERT: Whoever is in government, whether it be you or a Coalition?

ALBANESE: Of course. This is a Government that's given up on reform and doesn't even try to pretend to deliver it. It's given up on a future agenda. This is a Government where productivity was going backwards for two quarters in a row before the pandemic. We had a productivity recession. It's a Government that don't have an economic plan going forward. They don't have a plan for skills. They don't have a plan for national reconstruction. 

GILBERT: So you're still committed to reform? 

ALBANESE: Absolutely. 

GILBERT: Because there's this view that you're much more small-target than your predecessor.

ALBANESE: We are out there advancing an agenda for reform. And we've done that. Building back stronger through our National Reconstruction Fund to create the new industries of the future, but also to support the transformation of existing industries. To create Jobs and Skills in Australia so that we identify where the jobs are that will be needed, to make sure we train Australians for those jobs, making sure that we have more secure work, dealing with issues like casualisation and contracting out and the growth in the gig economy. We want to take advantage of the opportunity that's there for climate change action to create new jobs, rather than be scared of the future, like this Government is. I think it will take a change of government to actually have reform in this country. And we are up for it.

GILBERT: Mr Albanese, I appreciate your time. 

ALBANESE: Thanks very much, Kieran.

GILBERT: Talk to you soon.

ENDS