SUBJECTS: Scott Morrison’s meeting with the Queen; being a political leader; State of Origin; vaccine rollout; mRNA vaccines; Albo Corn Ale.

AMANDA KELLER, HOST: We haven't chatted to this fellow for some time. The Opposition Leader, Anthony Albanese. Anthony, hello. 

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

BRENDAN JONES, HOST: Hello, Anthony. Are you well? Or Albo. I have always felt over-familiar to call our political leaders their nicknames. You're not doing a sports show. 

KELLER: No. And I don't say ScoMo because it's not a friendship thing.

JONES: I used to say ScoMo before he became Prime Minister. And now it's changed a little bit. I just call him Scott these days. Actually, speaking of Scott Morrison, Anthony, did you see over there him meeting the Queen? Have you ever had a chance to meet the Queen?

ALBANESE: I have met the Queen at Buckingham Palace when the first G20 was on at the time of the Global Financial Crisis. So it was 2009. And we all did the long queue as the leaders of the G20. The major countries were there, President Obama and all of the leaders, Mr Berlusconi from Italy. They all queued up. And it was a good experience. We all stood around and had a very pleasant chat. 

JONES: Did you talk to the Queen?

ALBANESE: Well, just very, very briefly. I had a chat to the Queen, yes.

KELLER: Are there a lot of protocols where you are told, 'don't say this'? Imagine. 'Mr Berlusconi, be careful. Don't mention bunga bunga parties.'

ALBANESE: There were some interesting characters in the queue at that time.

KELLER: A lot of your life must be making other people feel comfortable. And the Queen's life is that too. How do you deal with characters that come up to you in the street? Because you never know what you're going to get from them.

ALBANESE: Australians in particular are pretty friendly. Occasionally, you'll get someone who wants to have a crack for whatever reason. But Australians are very, very friendly, I've got to say, even after the State of Origin in Townsville.

KELLER: I felt for you walking up in Townsville. How'd you go?

ALBANESE: Walking back from the stadium, Queenslanders love their footy and it was just a great experience. I just think the fact that they were chanting 'Queenslander' even when their team was 30 points down, good on them. It was a great atmosphere.

JONES: But it seems to some political leaders, they attract a different kind of attention. So Malcolm Turnbull, for example, there was some reason when he was on the hustings, people suddenly became obsessed with giving him animals. It started with someone's cat, and then someone bought a rat. He was like Dr Doolittle for a while there. And it was like Bill Shorten, they got him to eat stuff. 'Hey, Bill eat this, we want to see you eat stuff'. And Bill would have to eat a sausage sandwich in a strange way so that it didn't look odd.

ALBANESE: Well, you don't have to eat it in a strange way, of course. But I find people know I love my dog. So people always introduce me to their dogs. But that's great. 

KELLER: And so where are you with vaccination? I know you've been critical of the rollout. And with the recent two cases of COVID in Sydney, it seems extraordinary that someone who's driving international flight crews hasn't been vaccinated. This is a bit of an outrage, isn't it?

ALBANESE: Well, look, we need to get essential workers done right. We were told that we'd get the most vulnerable all done by Easter. So I have been critical at the fact that aged care residents, aged care workers, people with disabilities, people who work with them, people who are working in the transport sector, coming into contact with so many people, they should have been at the front of the queue. We were told Australia was at the front of the queue. And we just weren't. There was an element of complacency, I think, last year from the Government saying that we were at the front of the queue and will have four million by March. We are still only up to just under three per cent of Australians who have been fully vaccinated. And that puts us somewhere around about 100 as of today in terms of the vaccination rollout around the world. And until we roll out the vaccine, so listeners get vaccinated if you can, and until we fix national quarantine, they're the two main jobs the Government has had this year, and frankly, both of them have been botched.

JONES: If you were the boss of the world, what would have you done that would have been different to what the Liberal Party has done? It seems to be the AstraZeneca, for example, and that was the great white hope vaccine when it first was mooted to us. But then all of a sudden, this blood clotting thing clouded the issue. Is it possible to shut down that talk? Is it possible for a government to say, 'Look, we don't want this information getting out to the people', or is that restricting information?

ALBANESE: You can't do that. You've got to let people know about all of the health issues. You've got to be transparent about it. You've got to build that trust with the population. The problem here is they put all their eggs in the AstraZeneca basket and the chickens have come home to roost. We were saying this time last year, you had to do what international best practice said, which was five or six deals. We still don't have a deal with a drug like Moderna, which is similar to the Pfizer drug in that it is an mRNA vaccine, which makes it more flexible for different strains that come in. And it's been shown to be more effective. And if we had have done that, when the UK had a problem with AstraZeneca, they just switched people over to Moderna because they had those options there. It is risk management, basically. If you're not sure, and that's fair enough that people weren't sure about how these vaccines would go, people weren't even sure that mRNA vaccines would work at this time last year. But other countries had deals done and in place in order to manage the risk. We, of course, were trying to produce our own vaccine in Queensland that didn't work, unfortunately, with the CSIRO. But we didn't do that. We were too busy boasting and the Government slapping itself on the back and saying it was at the head of the queue. And that simply wasn't true.

JONES: Well, it's great to talk to you, Anthony. And by the way, thank you for the craft beer, the Albo Corn Ale. I enjoyed that. It was very nice.

ALBANESE: Very good. 

JONES: They sent me a carton.

ALBANESE: That was after a mention. So you've done well. You'll probably get another one. 

JONES: I might be like Cristiano Ronaldo. Might be building up the share price of Corn Ale.

ALBANESE: You can dream of his sponsorship dollars.

KELLER: I think that's a bit of a dream as well. It's nice to talk to you. Thank you, Leader of the Opposition, Anthony Albanese. 

JONES: Albo, thank you. 

ALBANESE: Great to chat. Have a great day.

ENDS