SUBJECTS: COVID-19 pandemic across Australia; vaccine rollout; lockdowns; Government delaying meetings with Pfizer in 2020.

DAVID KOCH, HOST: Labor has accused the Federal Government of delaying key meetings with Pfizer which could have fast-tracked Australia’s vaccine rollout. An email trail released under the Freedom of Information laws suggested the company offered to supply millions of doses by the end of 2020. Pfizer says it was not an offer, but an explanation of its production capacity. Health Minister, Greg Hunt, refuted Labor’s claims, saying Australia entered into formal discussions as soon as Pfizer was in a position to do so and that no earlier doses were available to Australia. For more I'm joined by Opposition Leader, Anthony Albanese. Good morning. Why did Australians need to be alerted to these emails? Greg Hunt has said you're being very selective of what you've released. 

ANTHONY ALBANESE, LEADER OF THE AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY: It was always a race, Kochie. It was a race to get vaccinated so that we weren’t in the current situation of having half the country locked down. What the emails show is that vaccines were available in 2020 in their millions and Pfizer tried to get to meetings twice with the Minister back in June and no meetings took place with the Minister until much later. And we didn't get a deal with Pfizer until November, after more than 40 countries had done deals. What these emails also show is that they alerted the Government to the fact that other countries were getting on with the job of doing these deals. It was Pfizer reaching out to the Government and the Government being complacent. They were essentially saying that it wasn't a race, as Scott Morrison has repeated. And it was just a debacle. And Australians are suffering now as a consequence of the slowness of the rollout where we are running last.

KOCH: Politics is all about, ‘He said, he said, he said, she said’. Pfizer have come out and denied the claims there was a delay. What do you make of their response?

ALBANESE: They have to do deals with the Government. And they have arrangements with the Government. And they don't want to be at the centre of political issues. But the emails speak for themselves, Kochie. It is a request from the global heads to meet with the Health Minister and that didn't happen.

KOCH: You made a big deal of this. ‘Supplied millions of doses by the end of 2020’. That didn't refer to us, that referred to the global capacity of Pfizer at the end of 2020.

ALBANESE: No, it made it very clear they wanted Australia to be part of that system. Here is a company reaching out, saying, ‘We produce this vaccine, we want it to be available to Australia, we want our global heads to meet with the Health Minister’, and the Health Minister not take up the meeting. Not even sending along the head of the Health Department. It was some junior burgher who goes along. And as a result, all these other countries get deals in place before us. And the Prime Minister said we were at the front of the queue. The truth is, Kochie, that we were at the back of the queue. And that is why we were running last in the developing world when it comes to the rollout of vaccines. And when it comes to lockdowns, Australians, including all of us here in Sydney, are locked down.

KOCH: We did have our own vaccine factory in Australia until we trashed that brand. And now, everyone is scrambling. Anthony Albanese, thank you for that. We have Greg Hunt live a little later.

ALBANESE: Thanks, Kochie.

ENDS