TRANSCRIPT: TV INTERVIEW - TODAY EXTRA, CHANNEL NINE - MONDAY, 13 SEPTEMBER, 2021

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TELEVISION INTERVIEW
TODAY EXTRA
MONDAY, 13 SEPTEMBER 2021

SUBJECTS: COVID in Western Sydney; packed Sydney beaches.

SYLVIA JEFFREYS, HOST: We’re joined this morning by the Member for Watson, Tony Burke, in Punchbowl. Tony, good morning to you. Thanks for your time this morning. Tell us how did you feel? How did people in your area feel when they saw those images of crowded beaches at the weekend?

TONY BURKE, SHADOW MINISTER FOR INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS: Fed up. Fed up is probably the best description I can give. We’re in a situation where people know the outbreak started in Bondi. And we know that Bondi wasn't locked down originally and that's part of how the whole thing's unravelled. People here, we knew that yesterday the rules were still officially that at Bondi and at the beaches you were meant to wear a mask if you weren't exercising. You look at that. I'm not sure when sunbaking started to be considered exercise. But the rules here are enforced pretty strictly. We're on a curfew, people get woken up in the middle of the night with helicopters flying overhead. Shift workers waking up their kids. You've got a situation where if you're wandering around without a mask, you will be pulled up here. And yet the exact same rule is not being applied in the areas where this started. I mean, we want the rules to be, we want every restriction to be gone as soon as it's safe to do so. We get that, we want that. But it's impossible to look at that and not say it isn't one rule in my part of Sydney, and a completely different rule on the coast.

DAVID CAMPBELL, HOST: So let's say that behaviour happened in a park in your local area, one of the lockdown LGAs, what do you think the reaction would be? Let's say there's a crowded park, police are trying to go in and sort of make sure that people are taking it easy. There's not a lot of mask wearing, how would people react do you think?

BURKE: Oh well, first of all, the police would go up to people and ask them to put a mask on. That's the first thing that would happen. And you know, sometimes people will be out and they will have forgotten, they'll have one in their pocket and they'll put it on. A mask might be provided to them if they don't have one with them. Most of what's happening has been, you know, it's not like it's sudden aggression. There have been some examples people have been concerned about but by and large, people are obeying the rules here. So you won't find many people not wearing masks and where they do, where people do break the rules, they get pulled up and they’re asked to put one on. My understanding is there was law enforcement at the beaches on the weekend but a judgment call was made that those rules didn't need to be enforced. And when people are living it so tough here. You know, you spend most your life looking forward to your days off. At the moment here, everybody - and Sylvia will get this - everybody's been desperate to get back to work. A lot of people are in jobs where they're essential workers, they have to go to work. That's where they've been catching the virus. And the response that comes through the media to the community, I'm not saying this program in any way, but the response that keeps coming is ‘oh the problem in western and southwestern Sydney is enforcement’ - those people are breaking the rules. Well, no, most of the spread here happens because people go to work. And then they come home to much bigger households than you have in other parts of Sydney. That's how it's happening. It's not people breaking the rules. And then we get the images on the weekend of people flagrantly breaking the rules at the beach, that it doesn't seem to matter.

JEFFREYS: It is so tough. It's so brutal for people in the west in the southwest of Sydney. It has been a long haul and as you say, you know, mentally to see those images must be a real struggle. I suppose though from a purely health perspective, we heard Dr Nick Coatsworth on the Today Show earlier this morning. The former Deputy Chief Medical Officer saying that he's not too concerned about people enjoying themselves in the outdoors. Let's have a listen.

COATSWORTH: I won't have any dramas going forward into summer with saying people enjoying themselves outside in parks and at beaches around the country.

JEFFREYS: Well, what's your response to a comment like that?

BURKE: Look I'm fine with the health advice. I just, I fail to work out how a park in western or southwestern Sydney is incredibly dangerous, and a park next to the water or a beach is not. And you can't just say it's just case numbers. You know, Canterbury-Bankstown is the biggest council in Sydney. It's enormous now since it was amalgamated. We've got suburbs like Belfield and Croydon Park that in the last week, they've had fewer cases than Cronulla. Fewer daily cases, fewer cases across the week than what you've had in Cronulla. But because of the vagaries of local government boundaries, their parks are considered completely dangerous and the ones on the coast are not. There's no way of looking at this without saying there's two different sets of rules. And the fact that it started on the coast is irritating. The fact that there is an exact match to the more multicultural suburbs, the suburbs where people are on lower wages, to where the restrictions are toughest and where we’re told ‘oh it’s because people aren’t obeying the rules’ and it's all an enforcement perspective. It started disappointing. People on the weekend were fed up. Increasingly, and I’m getting it through messages to my office and to me directly on social media, people are getting really angry about it. And just a message to the governments - please, if we're all in this together, don't demonise one part of Sydney.

CAMPBELL: Tony Burke with a strong message there. We really do appreciate your time. Tony, you stay safe there and our best to all your constituents as well because we know they're doing it tough.

ENDS