TRANSCRIPT: TV INTERVIEW - ABC 24 - JUNE 10, 2020

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TELEVISION INTERVIEW
ABC AFTERNOON BRIEFINGS WITH PATRICIA KARVELAS
WEDNESDAY, 10 JUNE 2020

SUBJECT: JobKeeper, Virgin Australia, state border closures, child care, women in COVID-19, Black Lives Matter protests, One Nation. 

PATRICIA KARVELAS, HOST: My next guest this afternoon is the Manager of Opposition Business and the Shadow Industrial Relations Minister, Tony Burke, who has been listening in, and it is a parliamentary sitting week. Question Time has been had so we are focusing a little bit on what our nation's politicians are doing this week. Tony Burke, welcome. On JobKeeper, and you have been raising issues around JobKeeper, the Prime Minister told Question Time, "Where there is a better way of doing things we won't step aside from doing them in a better way," so if there are better options, as the government reviews JobKeeper, why shouldn't it discontinue it in certain sectors?

TONY BURKE: Look, if they can come up with something better, then you know, obviously, you welcome improvements. What we spent most of Question Time on today were the people who have been left behind. Now, if they can come up with a way of making sure that the dnata workers are going to be looked after, that a millions casuals are going to be looked after, the people in the arts and entertainment sector or local government, who have all been left behind, are instead going to in some way be covered, that would be an obvious improvement and would exactly match things that we've been calling for. But for other sectors like the conversation you were just having with the minister about aviation - Virgin have made clear what the consequences are if JobKeeper falls off a cliff in September. That a whole lot of their bidders will simply walk away - that's what the administrators have made clear. So there are certainly aspects where it can be improved. There are a couple of aspects where they're currently spending money and we've said, the way you're spending that money is not really well-targeted and not that smart, in terms of some people receiving multiples of what they earn and other people, the JobKeeper being paid to the employer instead of the employee, when you are running down your annual leave. There's a few ways that it can be improved that we have been talking about. If that is what the Prime Minister means, then that would be really positive. If he is trying to find an excuse to just cut off support that is protecting jobs, or to refuse to open up to the people who they have been denying so far, then that wouldn't be real smart.

KARVELAS: Virgin's administrator, Deloitte, has told the Morrison Government its sale process for the insolvent airline could fail without more federal financial support. You heard me speaking to the minister, and the minister said that in fact borders internally in this country being closed is part of the problem - that there is no certainty about travel. Isn't that part of the story? Shouldn't states be opening their borders?

BURKE: Well we're in a pandemic, so closures are not just part of the story - closures are in fact the whole story...

KARVELAS: We are lifting restrictions now and that’s part of the plan?

BURKE: Yes, but what I'm saying is the whole reason we have any sort of economic downturn is because restrictions have been put in place and they've been put in place for a really good health reason. So what matters is – you don't want any of those restrictions to remain for one day longer than they need to. But you also don't want to forget the whole reason you did this in the first place was to prevent a pandemic running amok throughout the country in the way that it has in so many other countries. So these decisions, you want the economic benefit of easing restrictions, you want it as soon as you can, but you must not jeopardise the health advice, because the only reason we're in a stronger position than many countries in the world right now is because we did heed the health advice.

KARVELAS: And the federal health advice is to open the borders.

BURKE: Each state - like, you look around the country and different states are in different situations, clearly, at the moment, and you look at the figures state by state. And where I live in Sydney is in a completely different situation, for example, to the current circumstance in the Northern Territory. So it is different, and that's why different premiers are receiving different aspects of health advice and acting accordingly. If we were to get a second wave, then the hit to the economy would be worse than anything we are currently dealing with. So the answer will be different in different states but certainly the moment any restriction can be lifted, then you want that to happen.

KARVELAS: How about this trans-Tasman travel bubble being explored? New Zealand saying the states not moving is delaying the process. And at the same time Pacific nations want to be a part of it  - should Pacific nations be a part of it?

BURKE: I think those decisions, again, will be made for health reasons. But I would have thought any countries that end up with effective eradication, the arguments for not travelling between them would become pretty thin, I would have thought.

KARVELAS: I just want to talk about some other elements of critiques Labor’s been making. On child care, of course, you have been making the argument that the change - the end of free child care and the end of JobKeeper is an issue. Where else do you think women are disproportionately being left out or being left behind by the current COVID-19 stimulus? Do you think this is a broader problem outside of child care?

BURKE: I reckon there's going to be a problem that will be around for decades after this crisis based on the way a whole lot of people who haven't received support have therefore had drawing down on their own superannuation as the only option. We know the difference between, based on gender, the difference that men tend to have much higher superannuation balances than women. So a $10,000 draw-down on most men's accounts is a different story to drawing down the same money from a woman's account, in terms of how those stats run. Now, what does that mean? It means that that 10,000 would have otherwise been multiplied to a much greater sum, depending on someone's age over the course of their working life. That's going to hurt women disproportionately as they retire, and that then in terms of intergenerational theft, will be a burden that gets passed on to every taxpayer for supporting people who had no choice other than to rip into their own retirement savings during the pandemic, because for one reason or the other, the government had left them behind.

KARVELAS: So does Labor think that child care, for instance, should be free, entirely?

BURKE: The argument that we've been putting has been to provide a package for child care we would support, and we've pointed out - we've pointed out where different gaps have been, as is our role as an opposition. It would be ridiculous, in the middle of a pandemic that will have passed by the time of the next election, for the opposition to be crafting, "Well, if in an imaginary world we were in government here is all our suite of policies right now." What we can say is that, of the 120,000 people who get cut off on child care - first of all, three days before it was announced they were going to be cut off, they were all given a guarantee that they would be okay until September. They now find out they get cut off in around a week. Of those 120,000 early childhood educators, 96 per cent are women. That is the magnitude of the impact that we're looking at right now.

KARVELAS: Because you are the Manager of Opposition Business, I can't not ask you about this - four Labor MPs and senators have been told to get tested for COVID-19 after attending the Black Lives Matter protest at the weekend. Was it a mistake that they came to parliament?

BURKE: The advice of the Deputy Chief Medical Officer, as you know, was that people should go to work as usual and should be tested if they have symptoms. What those four Labor members have decided is to go above and beyond, out of an abundance of caution, to get tested anyway, and isolate anyway, pending the tests coming back. So they didn't have symptoms, they've just acted out of an abundance of caution, and that makes sense to do it that way. But you know, let's not forget the advice from the Deputy Chief Medical Officer was that it was okay for them to come. Further conversations took place this morning and they decided just to exercise that extra layer of caution. And I think you can only consider that a good thing for people to be taking even greater safeguards than what the health authorities otherwise would say you have to do.

KARVELAS: Would you go to one of these rallies?

BURKE: If we were in a different health situation I would be. I watched on the weekend, wishing I was in a situation to be able to be there. I heard the comments that you asked the minister before about various statistics of the difference of what it is to grow up as a First Nations person in Australia, versus my own ethnic background. And in answer to the question you put to the minister, you know, do you feel ashamed of those figures? Yes, I do. Yes, I do. And I think we've had a habit over the years, in both sides of politics - there is a way that we talk in politics, which is that when we're asked about an issue, we can always refer to a list of things that we've done. The strength of the Closing The Gap targets is every year it has forced a reminder of how what we've done is still not enough. To add a justice target to that, I think, is going to be really important, but for whatever way there is of public demonstration, and you know, as the health advice allows me to be there, I would want to be there.

KARVELAS: Just before I let you go, Tony Burke, you also heard me put to Simon Birmingham, no doubt, Pauline Hanson's comments, where she called George Floyd an American criminal. Now, she is the leader of One Nation but she is a senator in the Australian parliament. What do you make of those comments?

BURKE: Her politics feeds on outrage. It effectively - for all the talk of proud nationalism, that party has imported an American style of politics here. I don't want that style of politics here. I don't particularly want to join the outrage, because that in fact elevates what she said. I would simply refer to it in the way that I guess One Nation wouldn't want it referred to - that is importing foreign politics into Australia. We should be better than that. And most of us are.
 
KARVELAS: Thanks for joining us.

BURKE: Great to be back.

ENDS