SUBJECTS: Visit to Tasmania, COVID vaccinations, Israel.
 
BRIAN CARLTON: Joining me from Canberra just prior to jumping on a plane to head to our fair state is the Federal Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese, otherwise known as Albo. G’day, how are you going?

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Good morning.

CARLTON: I’ve got you. Excellent. How are you?

ALBANESE: I am very well, very well. How are you mate?

CARLTON: Yeah, we are going good. You are just about to jump on a plane to Launceston I understand.

ALBANESE: A plane direct to Hobart. I’ve made sure I flew directly in there given circumstances and the constraints which are there. Then I will be driving the Devonport firstly to be with our candidate for Braddon Chris Lynch and then later on today I will finish up the day in Launceston with Ross Hart of course who is recontesting the seat of Bass and also catching up with Bryan Mitchell tomorrow in Lyons.

CARLTON: OK. Obviously you have been in Canberra for long enough to qualify to get in without any without quarantining?

ALBANESE: Yes. I haven’t been to Sydney for a very long period of time.

CARLTON: It is your home city. So how long have you been away from home?

ALBANESE: I’ve been away for a number of weeks now. I think it is over a month now which is hard. But a lot of Australians are doing it a lot tougher than that. These are difficult times and I have the job of the Leader of the Labor Party. So I talk to my family on the phone and thank goodness for Facetime these days.

CARLTON: Yes like many of us do. One of the things that has become a little bit clear during the course of the pandemic is that National Cabinet is not working particularly well and we have also gleaned that the premiers have way more power than the Prime Minister does in fact I think the Prime Minister has less power than many Australians actually thought. Why do you want a job that has so little power compared to the state premiers?

ALBANESE: Well the Prime Minister has given up his power. The idea for example that immigration, customs and quarantine are not the responsibility of the Commonwealth is of course just not true. Scott Morrison gave up the power in terms of immigration which is quite extraordinary for a federal government to do.

CARLTON: To be fair though, the premiers did argue that they wanted responsibility for the quarantine arrangement and the Prime Minister, possibly not sensibly, allowed that to happen.

ALBANESE: No, it was meant to be a very temporary thing while arrangements were put into place and it has just stayed that way for a long period of time now. And of course that has been one of the failures. There have been two jobs that have needed to be done this year – fix up national quarantine - have fit-for-purpose quarantine facilities - and roll out the vaccine, and neither of them have been done well and Greater Sydney and Victoria are suffering the consequences of that with the current lockdown.

CARLTON: We will get to the vaccinations in a second. I do want to talk to you about because there’s a lot of issues involved and we’ll probably get through a quarter of them. In terms of lockdowns broadly, do you agree with their continued use?

ALBANESE: Well you’ve got to look after people’s health because unless you do not only will you have bad health outcomes, but you will have worse economic outcomes as well because the end-up restrictions will be more severe. And we have seen that in New South Wales play out whereby we originally had things called stay-at-home orders. And it got worse and then they became expanded stay-at-home orders and then theyt became a very light touch lockdown. And now we have the most strict lockdown that Australia has seen, including stopping all construction activity and people, including some in my electorate in the Canterbury-Bankstown area are not allowed to leave their suburb. So it has always been a bit of a false debate, the health-verses-economy debate.

CARLTON: With respect Anthony, I would argue that the AMA today suggesting that the lockdown in Sydney may well need to be permanent in order to deal with this is an indication that there are issues. What sort of message does that send when the union of doctors, who really probably should be hanging their heads in shame over a lack of a treatment regime for people who do have Coronavirus, who are tested positive, they shouldn’t be making noises like that – indefinite lockdown. How long can they keep going? How long would you like to see them in place? When can they stop?

ALBANESE: We can get on top of this. We have got on top of it before. We have seen that the restrictions have worked and that is why they have been necessary. Tasmania indeed, was the first state to put in place really strict restrictions ...

CARLTON: I remember. I remember vigorously, don’t worry.

ALBANESE: ... in terms of people entering the state. And Tasmania has done relatively OK. State governments have made difficult decisions. I haven’t been critical of any of the state governments be they Labor or Liberal-National. But I think it is a difficult time. This is a pandemic. It does impact people’s health and this new virus as well is particularly contagious.

CARLTON: Let me stop you there if I may. One of the things the Prime Minister seems to have changed tack on just in the past 48 hours or so is the eliminate-versus-containment argument. He seems to have fallen down on the side of elimination. Do you support that? Do we have bi-partisan support at the federal level for this elimination policy or are we actually going to do what we originally planned to do, which was contain this?

ALBANESE: I think we need to minimise it as much as possible.

CARLTON: But that recognises inherently Mr Albanese, that there will be cases floating around in the community and as long as there are cases floating round in our community our state governments lock down.

ALBANESE: No, I don’t think that’s right. The problem at the moment is that there aren’t enough Australians immunised.

CARLTON: It’s not right?

ALBANESE: Because there aren’t enough Australians immunised that particularly has meant that the risk to people’s health is far greater. We have seen in other countries where we have had positive cases where people are immunised the impact on people’s health is far less. So what we need to do is to just work through this. I have never been into the sort of definitional arguments. I think we need to listen to the health experts. But we also need to acknowledge that it may well be that this virus is with us for a long period of time. I am not for any constraint on people’s economic activity for the sake of it. I want less restrictions as possible. But we need, we need to take the health advice because if we don’t, we have seen what happened in New South Wales with bold statements - you know, isn’t it great that that New South Wales hasn’t locked down - and now people across south-west Sydney can’t even leave their suburb and can’t go to work, don’t have an income, jobs are being lost and the mental health anguish is just extraordinary for people.

CARLTON: I raised the point earlier on the program or the case of Sajid Javid who is the Health Secretary in the UK, basically the Health Minister, fully jabbed, fully vaccinated and has contracted Coronavirus. This is what we are going to have to get used to isn’t it? And this is on a day when the UK saw nearly 52,000 positive cases, massive crowds at sport events including obviously soccer a week ago. We had the tennis at Wimbledon. We had Silverstone Grand Prix over the weekend, tens of thousands of people unmasked, mostly vaccinated. Aren’t we selling the Australian people a false promise here by suggesting that when everyone is vaccinated everything will go back to normal? This is the British Health Minister who now has the Coronavirus after being completely vaccinated. He’s got two jabs and the place is seeing that number of infections daily and yet massive crowds out. Isn’t that where we’ve got to go somehow?

ALBANESE: But what you will also see is that someone who is fully vaccinated who contracts the virus will have far less health impact that someone who has not. That is the issue here.

CARLTON: I understand entirely.

ALBANESE: And that’s the problem in Australia. The problem in Australia is really simple. It’s one of that we didn’t do enough deals with enough vaccines quickly enough and get them into enough arms in order to avoid the situation that were are in right now.

CARLTON: How many would you have ordered at the front end? The initial deal was mooted in July of last year. The actual contract was signed in November. During that period what was your public position on how many vaccine doses of vaccine we should be ordering?

ALBANESE: Our public position at that time was that the Government should be doing five or six deals including not just with Pfizer but with Moderna and other mRNA vaccines which are there, because the advantage that they have as well is that they can be adjusted for new forms of the virus. So we were arguing then that they needed to do many more deals. The problem here is that the Government put all of its eggs in the AstraZeneca basket and the chickens have come home to roost.

CARLTON: Quick one here and this is more of a local issue. What role did you play in the re-elevation of Rebecca White to Labor leadership here in Tassie – Parliamentary Leader?

ALBANESE: None.

CARLTON: Not at all?

ALBANESE: None. But Rebecca is a very good friend of mine. I have spoken to her since she returned to the leadership. I have congratulated her on the birth of Hudson as well of course, which is a great event in someone’s life.

CARLTON: But you also publicly backed David O’Byrne.

ALBANESE: I played no role.

CARLTON: I didn’t say you did. I said you also publicly backed David O’Byrne as the new leader.

ALBANESE: Where did I do that?

CARLTON: Oh come on Albo.

ALBANESE: Where did I do that?

CARLTON: As soon as he was the new leader you were congratulating the new leader.

ALBANESE: Of course. Of course I congratulate anyone who is the Leader of the Labor Party.

CARLTON: That’s all I’m saying. On a final one, can I just on a positive note compliment you and congratulate you on your stand within the party in terms of the Palestine-Israel issue. You are subject to what I can only describe as vicious ad hominem attack in The Mercury today courtesy of a gentleman who you would know very well. Continue your position. Good on you. Appreciate that.

ALBANESE: No worries. I think we need a balanced position. I support the two-state solution there that has justice and peace in the region for both Israelis and Palestinians.

CARLTON: It’s the position that needs to be articulated I think. Some of the stuff being published in and around this issue, particularly locally, is frankly offensive. Appreciate your time, travel safety and enjoy your time in Tassie. Thanks.

ALBANESE: Thanks very much Brian.

ENDS