SUBJECTS: Labor Leader’s COVID diagnosis; Labor’s plan to fix the crisis in aged care; China-Solomons security pact; Australia’s engagement in the Pacific, Labor’s plan to address climate change, Coalition climate wars, Iso apparal.

TRISTIAN MACMANUS, HOST: Now it's day 17 of the election campaign. The PM is in Rockhampton while the Opposition Leader is campaigning hard from home iso in Sydney. He has gone toe to toe with 2GB’s Ray Hadley yesterday.

ALBANESE: The fact is they have dropped the ball Ray on so many areas…

HADLEY: …you said climate change Anthony. 

ALBANESE: No, no, no.

HADLEY: Yes, yes, yes, yes!

ALBANESE: No Ray, they say climate change, they say in their statements.

SARAH HARRIS, HOST: Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese joins us now from his COVID bunker. Mr. Albanese welcome to the show. That interview was tough yesterday. How did it how did it compare to COVID? 

ANTHONY ALBANESE, LEADER OF THE AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY: That's okay. I'm tough. Well, COVID is very frustrating. I must say I'm speaking to you from iso day six. I just had a mad rush to move inside where I'd set up when it started to rain. These are difficulties that you have during a campaign, but this is Australia in 2022, unfortunately. Tens of thousands of Australians are testing positive every day. And a lot of people have symptoms that are a lot worse than what I've had. So, I consider myself to be relatively fortunate.

HARRIS: Yeah, well we’re not all campaigning to be Prime Minister, Mr. Albanese it’s a tough job you have there.

ALBANESE: It is, but I'm up for a tough job. At the end of our last period in government, I was the Deputy Prime Minister, I was Minister for infrastructure, I was Minister for Communications rolling out the NBN and I was Leader of the Government in the House of Representatives. So, I'm certainly up for a top tough job. And I'm very committed to giving Australia a better future. We’re the greatest country on earth but we can be even better if we have a better government.

HARRIS: Mr. Albanese they say that you should never take a holiday in showbiz. We certainly know that. And we know that you're stand in, Jason Clare, has received heaps of praise for being articulate and good looking. Some have even asked whether he should be taking over as leader. On day six of isolation. What's your reaction to that chatter?

ALBANESE: Well, we have a fantastic team behind me. I'm captain of a great team. And Jason Clare is certainly better looking than I am. There is no question about that. He's a great mate of mine. We have a fantastic team and people have stepped in today. We have Amanda Rishworth stepping in talking about childcare, just in the electorate next to mine here in Reid with Sally Sitou our fantastic candidate. And we've had Richard Marles and we've had Penny Wong, and Chris Bowen, Jim Chalmers, Katy Gallagher. We've got a great team and we're ready to form Government. We've put out practical plans each and every day, and today are campaigning again cheaper childcare. That's one of the real issues that concern people. And that's our largest on budget investment during this campaign, because every dollar invested in childcare producers are greater than $2 return to increase productivity, increase women's workforce participation, and really boosting our economy. So we need to address the fact that for many working women, if they work a fourth or a fifth day, it's simply not worth their while, and that really holds them back in workplaces. So, we need to make sure that we have gender equity in this country. That's one of the big issues of this campaign. Childcare was the centerpiece of my first budget reply. The last one, of course, was aged care. So, in terms of the care economy, we stand for cheaper childcare, strengthening Medicare, and fixing aged care, because we care, we need to care about these issues, but we know that good action there is also good for the economy.

MACMANUS: Mr. Albanese, it's great to see you up and at it again. In response to your unveiled Pacific plan. The PM has mocked, I sent in a sent in the AFP the Labor Party wants to send in the ABC. How is the ABC going to help shore up Australia's influence in the region and convince the Solomon Islands Prime Minister not to allow China to establish a military base there? 

ALBANESE: Well, this is an extraordinary comment from a Prime Minister who's dropped the ball when it comes to the Solomons. One of the things that occurred with ABC cutbacks is that the ABC withdrew some of its broadcasts from the region. Now, common sense tells you what was going to happen. China stepped into that void and they took up some of the gap that had been left by Australia. We need Australian voices in the region. Australian diplomats, Australian voices through communications, Australian based infrastructure, we need a comprehensive plan to take advantage of the work that can be done by Pacific workers helping us as well in areas like the agricultural sector. These are all issues in which you build a strong relationship. And Malcolm Turnbull yesterday, really nailed it when he said that this is an area where you have to hold the hose, you can't just withdraw. And the Prime Minister's flippant remarks when we have a deal done between the Solomons and China, less than 2000 kilometres from Cairns and Townsville, a strategically really important destination for Australia, is just extraordinary. And it just showed yet again, the Prime Minister just wasn't up to the task.

HARRIS: Sorry. China has denied that it wants to build a military base on the Solomon Islands. Do you believe them? Should we be preparing for war with China?

ALBANESE: Well, what we should be doing is preparing for the challenge, which is there in our region, we have an area of strategic competition. And what that means is that we have to use everything at our disposal to make sure when we talk about our defence, that we actually boost defence capability. You don't support defence capability by just making announcements of funding that doesn't lead anywhere, like the $5.5 billion dollars that was there on our submarines, it means we need to be very cautious about the engagement in the region. I wouldn't have sold the Port of Darwin to interests that are directly linked to the Beijing Government. I believed that was a strategic error. We said that at the time and our concerns were dismissed by this Government. So, we need to work with our partners, the United States sent serious representatives, so Kurt Campbell, the senior representative in the Indo Pacific to the Solomons, we sent a guy called Zed we didn't even send the Foreign Minister or the Defence Minister, even though we've known this was on the cards for many months, according to the Government. And we need to stop this complacency. It is something that characterises this Government - too little too late. Whether it's the bushfire response, whether it's ordering enough vaccines, whether it's ordering rapid antigen tests, or responding to the floods, and this is a Government that doesn't act

HARRIS: If I can, if I can interrupt for a moment, it's very clear that Scomo has a pretty big image problem at the moment and, you know, certainly lost his sco-mentum. The world is pretty uncertain, however. So are you worried that voters might just think that Scomo is better the devil you know? What will make you the better Prime Minister? Why should someone, why should we vote for an untested Prime Minister at this stage?

ALBANESE: Well, we can be a better country with a better Government. And I think people will say to themselves, this mob have had a decade in office. At the last election, Scott Morrison said that he would create a National Integrity Commission. It hasn't happened. He said there'd be a Religious Discrimination Act, he withdrew that legislation. He said he wouldn't attack worker’s rights and wages. But we had legislation to get rid of the Better Off Overall Test. You only get rid of the Better Off Overall Tests if you don't want workers to be better off overall. And I think people are really struggling out there. We know that everything is going up except for people's wages. And that's putting real pressure on family budgets. I lead a team that has a plan to grow the economy. A plan to deal with the challenge of climate change by creating the opportunity that's there from action of supporting new industries and supporting new jobs. 604,000 new jobs, five out of every six of them in regional Australia. A plan to build more things here in Australia. That's one of the lessons from the pandemic is we need to stand on our own two feet. We didn't even have enough personal protective equipment, or ventilators, we had to spring into action, we need to do much better. And we need to continue to export our resources. But where we can value add here. Why is it we export the products, wait for someone else to add value and then import them back at greater value. We should be making batteries and making more things here. So that we build up our own national economy so that we create our own jobs. And we create a more secure future.

HARRIS: And we will be waiting for the official update on inflation at 11.30am. We'll bring those numbers when they happen. But lots of your questions? 

MACMANUS: Yeah, we've got lots of your questions. Thanks so much for answering a few of them for us. First, we've got one from Meg Davies here and it's on the line of the jobs. Will you consider encouraging traineeships into aged care to quickly address the low staffing issues?

ALBANESE: Absolutely. And we will have 465,000 fee free TAFE places in areas of skill shortage and we know that aged care is one of those. We need to address the aged care crisis the stories coming out of the report that was titled ‘Neglect’ a quite shocking whether it was people lying in their own faeces, unable to get help. The pressure that's on workers in the aged care sector. I've heard from them when they have three or four buzzers going at once and they have to choose who to go to. Those circumstances shouldn't arise. And we have taken the recommendations of the Royal Commission, five key points: 24/7 Nursing, putting the nurses back into nursing homes, 215 minutes of care, making sure that there's better nutrition and we've recruited Maggie Beer and her foundation to assist on that, and a wage increase for aged care workers if we're going to keep people in the sector, and better transparency and accountability.

HARRIS: Alright, we've received lots of questions. Mr. Albanese about the current Koala population crisis in general and Jesse asks, How will Labor commit to protecting our Koalas?

ALBANESE: This is a critical issue and Terri Butler, our environment spokesperson, a full comprehensive announcement in coming days. We know that Koalas are under threat because the changes to habitat that have occurred the encroachment of urban areas into the habitat of Koalas. And this is a unique animal. Everyone loves Koalas. We need to have a strategic plan to provide support for them. We'll have more to say about that in coming days.

MACMANUS: Great. And Cory James lives in Lismore, and Cory wants to know, what extra help will our flood communities receive? And how will your Government act on climate change?

ALBANESE: Well, we'll act on climate change by joining the world effort. We have a plan called Powering Australia that will result in a 43% reduction in emissions by 2030. The good news is it'll create jobs while we're doing it. We’ll fix transmission. At the moment even the Snowy Mountains scheme that is going to stage two, when it's finished won't be able to plug into the grid. So we need to fix energy transmission so that renewables can fit into that grid. We need also to make sure that we support the evolvement of electric vehicles. It'll become increasingly more and more a part of our motor vehicle system. People in 10 years’ time will overwhelmingly be driving electric vehicles. We know that that's the case. So we'll take taxes off electric vehicles to make them cheaper. But our climate change plan is one that's been endorsed by the Business Council by the National Farmers Federation as well as the ACTU. We need to end the climate wars, the absurd debate that still is going on in recent days. Climate change is real. We know the impact of the floods and the bushfires is real. We would have provided support across the board where it was needed rather than looking at a map and provided different levels of support and coalition held seats than we did in Labor held seats.

HARRIS: I have one more question for you Albo. Are you wearing pants? You’re working from home, I just thought it might have been business up  top you know boardshorts, party down the bottom. Hey! You're in iso?

ALBANESE: No. I have jeans on. You might notice my little iso companion, Toto has been wandering in the background there trying to make an appearance on Studio 10. It's been, it's been good to have a companion it must be said and she's quite pleased by having her human at home for six full days. It's the first time since she's been born that that has happened.

HARRIS: She's like if you want a political attack dog, I'm available! Anthony Albanese, we appreciate your time. We're glad you're on the mend and we look forward to seeing you on the campaign trail again soon.

ALBANESE: Thanks very much and look forward to being able to join you on the couch, one day in person. It is very frustrating trying to run a campaign virtually but thanks for having me on the program.

HARRIS: Take care. Stay safe. Stay safe.

ENDS