SUBJECT: Labor's $300 vaccine incentive proposal.

BASIL ZEMPILAS, HOST: And we've always been on the front end of it in here in our discussions, the three of us have been pretty keen to go and get it done. We know not everybody is as keen. Our next guest though, Jenna, has some incentives for them.

JENNA CLARKE, HOST: Absolutely, Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese, good morning. 

ANTHONY ALBANESE, LEADER OF THE AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY: Good morning, I really enjoyed ‘Sounds of Then’. It really is ‘Sounds of Then’ – thinking about when it came out.

JENNA CLARKE, HOST: Indeed, now Albo, $300 cash payment to all aussies that are vaccinated. How is this going to work?

ALBANESE: How it will work is through the Medicare system, of course. There's a record of everyone who's getting vaccinated, and we need to do everything we can to encourage people to get vaccinated. Everyday Australians have borne the burden of this pandemic. Now, we need to reward those who do the right thing, to protect their own health, the health of their communities, but also our economy struggling. It’s likely the September quarter will be negative. So it makes sense to provide some economic stimulus and if you give $300 payments to people, guess what – they'll spend it. They'll spend it creating jobs in their local communities, protecting jobs, helping small business, so I think it is a practical proposal we're putting forward constructively to the Government and they've responded negatively I’ve got to say. It was somewhat surprised they didn't even consider it. But that’s what we will continue to advocate it, like will continue to advocate for purpose built quarantine facilities.

ZEMPILAS: Albo, can I ask you this? So we just went around the room - you heard us, we've gone and got vaccinated. Now we don't need that money, obviously. We're not doing, we didn't do it for that reason but, there'll be some people who say, well, hang on, we got proactive, we went and got it done. Do we get the $300 already? 

ALBANESE: You bet. Absolutely. Absolutely. A really simple system, simple systems are the best. The $300 payments for every Australian who gets vaccinated, we want to reward those who've been able to be vaccinated. Of course, there's been issues with supply. Australians have been trying to get vaccinated and have been unable to, a lot of them, because of the supply issues. But we want that incentive to be there. We know increase supply is coming. One of the things that we've seen with the current Government is they don't plan ahead, they act too slow. We saw that with wage subsidies last year when we first proposed it, they said it was a dangerous idea. But JobKeeper kept people in work. This will assist people and assist the economy and jobs at the same time.

ZEMPILAS: It seems reasonable enough. Let's find out from our listeners, Anthony Albanese, thank you for your time. And thank you for putting this idea forward, whatever it takes, I mean, if it can make a difference if we can get moving from 15.4 per cent faster. I think it's probably worth a try.  

ENDS