TRANSCRIPT: TV INTERVIEW - ABC 24 WITH PATRICIA KARVELAS - TUESDAY, 30 JUNE 2020

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TELEVISION INTERVIEW
ABC AFTERNOON BRIEFING WITH PATRICIA KARVELAS
TUESDAY, 30 JUNE 2020

SUBJECT: Victoria’s coronavirus battle; border closures; JobKeeper. 

PATRICIA KARVELAS, HOST: I want to bring in my political guest for today, Labor's Tony Burke, he's a frontbencher, leader of opposition business, and my guest this afternoon, Tony Burke welcome. Huge news this afternoon, Victoria has put in place stay at home orders in more than two dozen suburbs. This is what everyone was hoping to avoid. What is your reaction to what we're seeing unfold in Victoria?

TONY BURKE, SHADOW MINISTER FOR INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS: I think everyone who looks at this sensibly can only feel for people in Victoria at the moment. Almost everybody has done exactly the right thing. And with a pandemic, like any global pandemic begins with one case, and it doesn't take much for another outbreak to occur. And that's what we've seen. So the one thing I hope comes from this, is I hope the rubbish we've had around Australia for a while, of a couple premiers being singled out, Annastacia Palaszczuk in Queensland, the singling out of Daniel Andrews in Victoria, with people saying, “ease the restrictions, ease off, you're going too hard” - those calls look pretty stupid now. I really hope after all of this we can start now to acknowledge that the premiers around the country are doing the best they can with the medical advice they have. There will be outbreaks, and we need to hold our nerve and not go back to the ridiculous bickering that has dominated some of the last couple of weeks.

KARVELAS: Look, when New South Wales faced the kind of crisis it did with the Ruby Princess cruise ship, federal Labor, also state Labor, put an enormous amount of pressure on that government in relation to that blunder. The premier now says a breach by security at hotel quarantine is the culprit for this outbreak. A former judge will investigate. Given the amount of political pressure you put on Gladys Berejiklian in relation to the mistake that New South Wales made, isn't it logical there should be scrutiny on Victoria in relation to this mistake?
 
BURKE: Well, first of all, Victoria has put scrutiny on themselves in terms of Daniel Andrews announcing today exactly how that inquiry will run. So, you know, that's been handled impeccably. In terms of putting scrutiny on Gladys Berejiklian – all the comments I made and I heard other people in federal Labor made, were about Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton. The Federal Government had said they were taking over the decision making process, effectively, when they said they were bringing it under federal control. They made an announcement very specific to cruise ships, and then the moment something went wrong, they said it's the state's responsibility. I don't accept that Federal Labor was putting pressure on the state government. We certainly were trying to hold Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton to the words they said publicly, which they were running a million miles away from on Ruby Princess.
 
KARVELAS: You're a member of the Federal Parliament. What is your message to everyone watching this right now? Because clearly our efforts to suppress the virus haven't worked everywhere.
 
BURKE: They haven't worked everywhere but they have worked. And this is where - we are one of the most successful countries in the world at dealing with suppressing the virus. And we've done that by making sure that people keep their social distancing, they practise good hand hygiene. The app hasn't been involved in much contact tracing yet but I have downloaded it, and a whole lot of people have, and there may come a point where that comes into play in a serious way as well. Certainly what we've done with social distancing and hand hygiene has made a real difference and a significant difference. And certainly, for Victoria, they will do the contact tracing as quickly as they can, they have taken very serious actions today. I think it would be a big mistake as a nation, if we were to look at there being a second outbreak and saying somehow we failed on the health response. There's a lot of aspects of the economic response where I'm concerned about where the government is heading, but in terms of the health response I wouldn't for a minute think we as a nation should lose our nerve on how we got this far.
 
KARVELAS: That's an interesting point that you make. Because ultimately the health outbreak we're seeing in Melbourne is being used as a reason to justify the continuation of closed borders, particularly now specifically to Victorians. And this is obviously a huge issue for both Queensland and South Australia. Queensland going quite far in actually essentially banning Victorians and saying they have to quarantine and pay for that quarantine if they are to effectively go into Queensland. Do you think that that change is actually justified?
 
BURKE: I'm not critical of it, at all. I'm not a Victorian. As a Victorian, you’d feel frustrated hearing another state make an announcement like that. But part of the success of this has been that we have stopped people from moving at different points, whether it's been the orders for people not to move outside their home, for people only to travel when it's necessary and at different points, state borders. And ultimately the big example of all that has been the shutting down of international borders. So all of these different controls have been part of our success and for Queensland to make a decision like that – look, as an Australian, you never like hearing there's some Australians who can't move to certain places but we're in a global pandemic. The rules are going to be different and need to be different during this time.
 
KARVELAS: Sure, but New South Wales hasn't closed its borders. In fact, Daniel Andrews said in his press conference he was speaking to Gladys Berejiklian and also, he expected people in the hot spots not to travel anywhere – not New South Wales, not anywhere – they've got the four reasons they're allowed to leave. Isn't that a better approach? If we're going to have the localised outbreaks, is it realistic to ban an entire state?
 
BURKE: Look, the New South Wales-Victorian border, there are so many crossing points, and so much economic traffic back and forth every day, that's very different to the border between Victoria all the way to Queensland. So I just think it's a decision of a different magnitude.
 
KARVELAS: Okay. But there's economic consequences and look you originally were invited on because you're in an economic portfolio so let's talk about the economic repercussions of this. This is a delay in terms of opening the country up, Tony Burke. It's huge. And the government will announce additional support for business. What kind of economic impact is it going to have? The Victorian outbreak, the fact we now have these delays in opening up Australia, and business in these hotspots will be asked to retract as well.
 
BURKE: The economic impact will be huge. The impact on jobs will be extraordinary. But the way to get to the other side - we've had an economic impact because of a health challenge. And so the pathway forward has always been if you can fix the health problem, then you're on the path to fixing the economic problem. And there's been some debate in the last couple of weeks where some politicians have tried to put pressure on different premiers as though you could separate the two challenges. Premiers putting the health consequences first is the right thing to do. It's a tough thing to do. Because you know in the immediate term what that’s going to mean for jobs and for the economy and for business and for demand. But the alternative is you let this thing run, and you end up with even tougher lockdowns. The states that have been able to really significantly remove their restrictions have been able to do that because they don’t have cases. And that's where the bigger states like Victoria and New South Wales, we have to try to make sure that we can get to. You ask me, can I quantify it, I don't have those sorts of numbers at my fingertips. But we are talking very significant economic consequences and the most important pathway to fixing that is to fix the health problem that started all this.
 
KARVELAS: Let's go back to the Melbourne outbreak and its economic repercussions. What sort of impact should this outbreak and its consequences on state borders, on reopening the economy, on jobs, have on that review that's before the Treasurer on JobSeeker and JobKeeper? Do you think it puts more pressure on the government in relation to what it does with those programs, come September?
 
BURKE: Victoria now is effectively back to where the rest of the country was a couple of months ago. More states may end up in a similar situation in the coming months, who knows? But it makes it increasingly ridiculous for the government to claim that all the protections, including JobKeeper, are going to fall off a cliff in September. If they do that, at a time where the economy is going to be as fragile as this, they are simply pushing a whole lot of businesses and a whole lot of jobs straight to a cliff. Now, they've got a document in their hands right now which should be public and they are keeping private until after the Eden-Monaro by-election, that will give people information and certainty for decisions around the future of JobKeeper. Now, I've always thought it was ridiculous for the whole system to fall off a cliff. But if that's what the government is intending to do, then they should not be keeping that a secret. You've got to think with this report they've got, that if it was generous, it was saying we were going to avoid pushing so many businesses off a cliff, you think they would want to make it public. So we can only presume they're of a mind to take that sort of risk.

KARVELAS: Let's talk about what happens to these payments. The prime minister said yesterday the government had received feedback from businesses concerned their hiring problems were essentially the result of new employees, people who could be employees, being on higher levels of payment. Is that an impediment in your view, the fact that people are on payments that are too high at the moment?

BURKE: I tell you what is an impediment for people joining the workforce. For every advertised job there are 12 people on JobSeeker. For every single job ad you see, there are 12 people on JobSeeker. Now, at a time like that, for the government to start wanting to rail some, “oh, people aren't trying hard enough” argument - I see they rolled Craig Laundy out today as well, claiming there's all these workers taking advantage of the system - you've got 12 people without a job for every job that is advertised. Now is the time to create some confidence, to create some business certainty, to not send businesses off a cliff, and certainly not to blame people for being unemployed. At a time when for every 12 people unemployed there's only one advertised job.

KARVELAS: Tony Burke, thank you so much for joining us this afternoon.
 
ENDS