SUBJECTS: NSW reopening; border closures;  who didn’t need JobKeeper; Labor’s Buy Australian Plan; NRL Grand Final.

LUKE BONA, HOST: Anthony Albanese, welcome back to the Night Shift on Triple M. How are you?

ANTHONY ALBANESE, LEADER OF THE AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY: Good to be with you. I’m very well.

BONA: Look, ‘Freedom Day’ in Sydney yesterday. The atmosphere around the town, even though there was rain, was unbelievable. When would you like to see the rest of Australia experience what Sydney did yesterday?

ALBANESE: Well, yesterday certainly was a very positive feeling. I went to a local craft brewery in my electorate, Willie the Boatman, and it was a good day. And I would like to see, like all Australians would. You don’t want to see restrictions in place for one day longer than necessary. But you do want to open up safely. And of course, in New South Wales still, it’s open only to people who are fully vaccinated. You’ve got to show your certificate. You still have to wear your mask if you’re on your way there. You still have to make sure that you can’t stand around and have a drink, you have to be seated. So there are restrictions there.

BONA: I understand all that. I called it ‘Freedom-ish Day’. But gee whiz, it was better than life was on Sunday. But when are you going to have a chat with Western Australia and Queensland and say ‘Come on, at what level of vaccination will you open your borders to the rest of Australia and get your economies going and let families get back together?’

ALBANESE: Well, I’ll give you the big tip. Families are back together in WA and Queensland. They were back together last week. They were back together last month. Restaurants have been open. Pubs have been open.

BONA: Not if their families are from NSW, Queensland or Victoria.

ALBANESE: People have been going to the football. They have had far more freedom than we have had. That’s the truth of the matter. And some of that, I think, has been missing from the debate in Canberra if you listen to Scott Morrison’s comments. And when I speak to Annastacia and Mark, as the premiers of their respective states, certainly they make that point very strongly. But it’s a good thing. And they don’t want restrictions to be there one day longer than necessary.

BONA: I get that. So when will they open the borders? When can I, in Sydney, go to WA?

ALBANESE: They will open their borders as soon as it’s safe to do so.

BONA: And what level of vaccination will that be? We just want an answer.

ALBANESE: Well, I’m not in charge of that, Luke, as you know. But the truth is that people in their states have enjoyed more freedom because their states managed the pandemic well, they made sure that they protected the people in their state and, as a result, they have far more freedom in Brisbane or in Perth than we have in Sydney at the moment.

BONA: I take calls on this national radio program from Western Australia and Queensland. I’ll tell you. The people of Queensland and WA believe that they did the right thing. They both won two huge elections based on border control. I get that. But it is frustrating for people in NSW, Victoria, that want to go to Queensland or WA to visit families, or just go away for a holiday, and you can’t.

ALBANESE: Of course it is. I want to visit there too. I love going to WA and to Queensland. It was very frustrating for me to watch a grand final with my beloved South Sydney Rabbitohs, watching it in my lounge room in Sydney. But the truth is that in Queensland they were able to have the NRL. If they hadn’t have kept the people of Queensland safe, there wouldn’t have been a National Rugby League competition, there wouldn’t have been a grand final, and there wouldn’t have been a grand final of the AFL conducted in Perth because neither of those competitions would have been able to continue.

BONA: I get that. But would you like to see WA and Queensland borders open at 80 per cent double vaxed?

ALBANESE: I would like to see the borders open as soon as it is safe to do so.

BONA: And when will that be?

ALBANESE: Well, when it is safe to do so. When the health authorities advise that it’s safe to do so. But I’m not in charge of that process. There is a national plan. I support the national plan. The truth is that, as Mark McGowan on last night’s news said, that NSW received extra vaccines, quite rightly, because there was a crisis here. And they received, vaccines were redirected to the states where there was these outbreaks. That’s meant that the vaccination rates are higher. So we have to have a common sense solution here.

BONA: I get that. But if you have a massive bushfire, you put the water where the fire is. And the fire was in Sydney.

ALBANESE: Exactly.

BONA: Anthony Albanese joins us here on the night shift. Look, I want to move to a story that concerns me, and it’s concerned me for quite some time, that companies were receiving JobKeeper payments, billions of dollars of our money, when they didn’t need it. It’s now been confirmed that Treasury knew it the whole time.

ALBANESE: And what’s remarkable is that it was $20 billion of additional money was received.

BONA: $27 billion I read.

ALBANESE: Well, the real tragedy is as well is that so many sectors that did need money - small business, the arts sector, the education sector, hospitality - that were really struggling to receive support, didn’t get it, at the same time as you have companies that were increasing their profits did receive it. And that just shows a mismanagement of the program. This is a good idea, badly run. We argued for JobKeeper, we argued for wide subsidies. It was a good idea to keep those relationships between employers and employees. But it was a very badly run program, one that allowed taxpayers’ money to go to companies that went straight to the bottom line of profits or to individuals who certainly didn't need it.

BONA: Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more, Albo. And at the time, when I heard that Harvey Norman got $22 million and made record profits, I said, and Gerry was pressured to pay back the money, and he said, ‘No, I've got shareholders to think of it's not my choice’, I called bullshit. So, in the end, they repaid $6 million of the $22 million they claimed in JobKeeper. And I reckon that was too little, too late. I said, had Gerry Harvey and Harvey Norman repaid the whole $22 million, they would have made $122 million in profit from people saying, ‘What a good bloke. Are we going to buy a widescreen TV in the lounge? Yes, we are. Let's go to Harvey Norman, they did the right thing.’

ALBANESE: Well, that’s right. It's just extraordinary. And I can just imagine a Coalition that went on about how much school halls and education infrastructure, which benefited every school in the country, they carried on about that. The truth is that over 97 per cent of the school program, the Building the Education Revolution, during the Global Financial Crisis, didn't receive a single complaint. Those complaints that were looked at showed that less than one per cent of the projects had any issues with them at all. And I've got to tell you, if you had a hundred trades people come to your home to do things, and only one out of one hundred, or less than one out of out of the one hundred had an issue, you'd think it was a pretty good outcome. Whereas here what we have is a massive amount of money that has been wasted where it wasn't needed and the other areas that could have benefited from that funding, they simply didn't get it.

BONA: We’re talking with Anthony Albanese, Leader of the Opposition here in Australia. Just quickly, you've pledged to a Buy Australian plan if you win government at the next election. This makes total sense. And my question is, no brainer, how come it's taken someone so long to come up with this policy? Can you explain what you intend to do?

ALBANESE: Well, we have a 10-point plan, we'll have a Future Made in Australia office, firstly, that will coordinate this in the Department of Finance and the Department of Industry. We know that governments throughout Australia have purchased goods and services worth $200 billion over the last three years. We'll make sure that Australian companies get absolute priority for it. And there are practical ways that you can do that. For example, if you're building an infrastructure project, you make sure that you break up the packages into smaller amounts. So you don't say, ‘Who can provide this project worth $10 billion, who can build it?’ If you do that, the only companies that can do it are big multinationals where the profits will go overseas. You break it up so that middle ranking and smaller, and when we say smaller, we're still talking about in the hundreds of millions of dollars of projects, can bid. And that way you build up your national sovereignty, you build up your Australian-based skills. So you do that in that sector. You have industry plans in others so that you make sure the goods and services that are being provided, that Australian companies and businesses get the first priority, so that we make sure that we buy Australian. We know that everyone out there, your listeners will go to their local shopping centre, they'll go to the local butcher, they'll go to their local supermarket, because they know that when they spend money in their local shops, it creates local jobs and the money stays in the local community.

BONA: I want to talk to you, and we've run out of time today, I want to talk to you in more detail about the possibility of creating a car manufacturing business back here in Australia. Is that at all possible? Could we make electric cars? They seem to be the way of the future. There's a lot to talk about. We keep running out of time. Can we talk again soon?

ALBANESE: Absolutely. I'll leave you with this thought. The fastest electric vehicle charging stations in the world are produced by a company called Tritium. They're based in southeast Queensland. It is Australian ingenuity and ideas. They're made there in in Brisbane. I've been to the factory, been on the floor. They're exported to Europe and North America. It shows what we can do. Australians have always been smart at inventing things. What we haven't always done is had the confidence to commercialise them here and to take advantage of those opportunities.

BONA: And we also have enormous competition in wages when it comes to sending stuff offshore. And that's something that we can talk about down the track. I just, one last thing, Anthony Albanese. Did you catch the score in the grand final at all? Did you did you listen to triple M's coverage? How are you feeling? Are you in counselling?

ALBANESE: I am okay. I'm still waiting for a logical explanation for how the Adam Reynolds charge down was not a knock-on.

BONA: Oh, stop it.

ALBANESE: A charge down in which the ball goes out or he was tackled in the air. One or the other. But Penrith played very well and I congratulate them on that effort.

BONA: Look at this, sideline eye and video referee, Anthony Albanese. Listen, I’ll talk to Dan Ginnane, see if we can get you on the commentary team.

ALBANESE: Even Phil Gould was calling that out.

BONA: Okay, Albo. Albo.

ALBANESE: And he certainly is a Panthers tragic.

BONA: Albo, that’s enough now. You need closure. You just need to close your eyes. I’ll send you some nature beat, alright?

ALBANESE: I’ll leave you with this thought too. Twenty-two in ’22. We have 21 premierships and we’ll get our 22ndin 2022. It has a ring to it.

BONA: Such a proud club with such a proud history. I wouldn’t bet against that. Albo, nice to talk to you. Let’s talk again soon.

ALBANESE: Thanks mate, always good.

BONA: Anthony Albanese, here on the Night Shift on Triple M.

ENDS