SUBJECTS: Lockdowns across the country; anti-lockdown protests; vaccine rollout; Scott Morrison failing Australians during a pandemic; Federal Government failing on delivering; JobKeeper; wage subsidies.

KARL STEFANOVIC, HOST: Labor Leader, Anthony Albanese, has taken aim at the PM blaming him for our bungled vaccine rollout and the current lockdowns across the country.

ALLISON LANGDON, HOST: The Opposition Leader joins us from Brisbane. Anthony, nice to talk to you this morning.

ANTHONY ALBANESE, LEADER OF THE AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY: Good morning. Good to be back.

LANGDON: We've missed you. Let’s talk about the protests at the weekend. There are reports they could lead to further lockdowns. That would be catastrophic.

ALBANESE: This was very irresponsible and reckless behaviour, to gather in the way they did, to ignore the rules that are there. Australians have been magnificent during this period. They're doing it tough. There are 14 million Australians in lockdown as we speak. They're making sacrifices to protect themselves and their family and their community. These people said, ‘Bugger that, we'll do what we want’. As a result, it could well be a super-spreader event. The violence against police, I mean, our police officers have done such an incredible job. They're risking their own health to keep us safe as a community and they deserve respect, not what they got on Saturday.

STEFANOVIC: It was disgusting. I also thought about what happens in a couple of weeks, what pressure does the possible outbreak put on our emergency services, what pressure does it put on our health workers who are already doing it pretty tough. There is a suggestion as well that Sydney's lockdown could now go until September, mid-September. Do you think Gladys made mistakes not locking down sooner?

ALBANESE: If you have a look at how Victoria and South Australia have gone, then it's pretty clear that the rhetoric that was there, that NSW doesn't lock down, that Scott Morrison and Gladys Berejiklian were saying, was just not right. We did need to take action. We do need to get the numbers down. What it means is that the lockdown is longer than it would have been had action been taken earlier.

LANGDON: If you were home, you'd be locked down now.

ALBANESE: That's right.

LANGDON: Are you ever returning?

ALBANESE: The difficulty I've got is Parliament sits next week. In order to participate in the Parliament, I have to have been away from Sydney for two weeks or doing what many of my colleagues are doing as we speak. I'm sure they'll be watching in their isolation for two weeks in preparation for Parliament. It's part of the job but so many more Australians are doing it a lot tougher.

STEFANOVIC: The NSW Treasurer is pleading to bring back JobKeeper. You want it back. Does it matter how much that costs the country when you have a country where a majority of parts of the country is locked down?

ALBANESE: Well, let me say this, Karl, if the circumstances were right before to have JobKeeper, to keep people in jobs, to keep those links between employers and employees, they're right now. The circumstances are at least as dire as they were then. We have small businesses – I had a link up with all the small business in my electorate last week. They're doing it so tough. People are losing their jobs. We need to give more support to individuals as well as to small business. I don't care what they call it, Karl. They can call it something else but we need more support. Because if you don't get it, if you lose those businesses, it ends up costing you more. Because to build back after something's destroyed, it costs more than keeping something going. That's the basic principle here.

LANGDON: We've been speaking to so many businesses across different states over the past couple of weeks who say this is the one that's going to break them. Why do you reckon there is this reluctance from Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg to bring back JobKeeper or something like it?

ALBANESE: I don't know. Scott Morrison, I think, one of the things that characterises him is he never acts until it's too late and then action's too little. It doesn't matter whether it's bushfires, it doesn't matter whether it is the introduction of JobKeeper originally only occurred after the queues were wrapped around Centrelink offices around the country. He dismissed it when we supported wage subsidies and he said they'd be necessary as a dangerous idea. There is something about that reluctance that he has. We saw it last week with the reluctance to say sorry. He just waits and waits, whether it's actions about gender and the treatment of women, including in Parliament House. The action is always delayed until it's forced to happen. I think there will need to be more support but the sooner it happens, the less businesses will go to the wall.

STEFANOVIC: Is this vaccine rollout your ticket to the Lodge?

ALBANESE: I'm not worried about that, Karl. What I'm worried about is people's health and our economy and their jobs. It's very clear. We were saying this time last year, I'm sure on this show, I would have said, and Chris Bowen would have said, we need to do five or six deals, we needed to do them in sufficient quantity to get them sooner. The Prime Minister was assuring us that we were first in the queue, that everyone in aged care, disability care, workers and residents, would be fully vaccinated by Easter. Of course, that still hasn't happened today. We still have aged care workers and people in disability care workers frustrated. People are frustrated because they just can't get a jab. It is supply. Essentially the problem here is that we don't have enough vaccines.

STEFANOVIC: Nice to talk to you, Albo. Have a great week.

ALBANESE: Fantastic.

ENDS