TRANSCRIPT: TV INTERVIEW - SKY NEWS - 3 JUNE, 2021

E&OE TRANSCRIPT 

TELEVISION INTERVIEW
SKY NEWS WITH LAURA JAYES
THURSDAY, 3 JUNE 2021

SUBJECTS: Victorian lockdown; support for workers; Scott Morrison’s failure on quarantine and vaccines.

LAURA JAYES, HOST: Joining me live is the Shadow Industrial Relations Minister, Tony Burke, thanks so much for your time. Now, the business of Parliament could get in the way of this very important program. You could be called away to a division –

TONY BURKE, SHADOW MINISTER FOR INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS: It won't be a walkout.

JAYES: Okay. And it's nothing personal. I'm know that. But first of all, let's talk about these financial payments. What should we see here? Because we've seen Josh Frydenberg rule out this morning any extension of JobKeeper. You comfortable with a grant situation on a case by case basis?

BURKE: I don't think we can weight it up until we see what they put forward. The big thing to remember here is yesterday, the prime minister was claiming that none of this was his responsibility at all. That up until now, the message from the federal government to in particular sole traders and casual workers who’ve been left with nothing to live on for more than a week, the messages was that they're on their own and that the federal government will take no responsibility. If there's a shift from that, then that's a good thing. And that's been implied by comments the Treasurer's made this morning. But in terms of the exact package, we’ll weight it up. The thing that is unacceptable, but I have to say incredibly common, is the prime minister refusing to take responsibility.

JAYES: Isn’t the Victorian Government refusing to do the same?

BURKE: Well, let's not forget why we are in this situation in Victoria. This is an outbreak from hotel quarantine that did not happen in Victoria, it happened in South Australia. It was an outbreak being linked directly to the fact, we presume, that the that we are looking at a strain that can be spread by aerosol method far more than the earliest strains we were dealing with. Something that would be addressed if we had purpose-built quarantine, which the government should have started on, not just this year but well into last year they should have been moving on this. If they had done that we would not be in the situation we're in in Victoria.

JAYES: This is the fourth lockdown. I mean, when you look at New South Wales, for example, it's taken almost double the amount of returning Aussies from overseas. It hasn't had four lockdowns. So you've got to look at Victoria and say it's got something, just a small element, to do with the state government there.

BURKE: Well the highly contagious individual who caught coronavirus inside quarantine – didn’t arrive with it, caught it in there – if he’s travelled to Sydney instead of traveling to Melbourne then we would have exactly this problem in NSW right now. If this individual had stayed in South Australia –

JAYES: NSW doesn’t go into lockdown, it hasn’t even locked Victorians out of NSW. It has much more confidence in its QR system. And its contact tracing. So NSW doesn't ask for monetary handouts. So there’s something amiss here. Something needs to be fixed from the state end.

BURKE: The last time we had lockdowns in New South Wales, where people were confined to homes, we had JobKeeper. That was there last time. This is the first extended period of time where we’ve had sole traders, small businesses and sole traders in particular have been left with nothing to live on. Now once you hit something that’s seven days or more you're talking about an entire cycle of your rent. An entire cycle of your grocery bills where you have zero income to pay for it. And because it's simply no shifts for a week then, you saw the sort of problems on the weekend Dan Tehan got into when trying to imply Centrelink would pick up the tab. They don't. And this is the first time that we've had that extended period of time where people are left with nothing to live on. And we've talked many times on this program about people in insecure work. The government hasn't seen it as a problem, but they are the exact people who now for more than a week - and looking down the barrel of two weeks – have nothing to live on.

JAYES: We've got this situation where the state’s lock down and the federal government is expected to fund that lockdown, for want of a better way to explain that. Do you think if there is, you know, this implied kind of cash handout, every time a state locks down, it would be disincentive to do everything you can to keep the state open.

BURKE: I think you'll find states do everything they can to keep themselves open. No state wants to deliver a lockdown. When the health advice says this is the way to stop people from dying, then you make those decisions. But that health advice would be from a completely different foundation if the vaccine rollout was happening properly. The problem that we're dealing with at the moment wouldn't even have arrived, if we'd had purpose-built quarantine, so that we didn't have a situation that somebody arrives in Australia healthy and leaves hotel quarantine with the virus.

JAYES: Well minister that might be happening tomorrow. We're told, and Josh Frydenberg has given a big hint, there’ll be an announcement about a quarantine system in Victoria. Do you know anything about that? I imagine you’d welcome the news.

BURKE: Anything that causes the government to finally start taking some decisions they could have taken last year is welcome. Anthony Albanese has been clear about the need for purpose-built quarantine, to get the vaccination moving, about having a proper advertising campaign and starting to manufacture mRNA vaccines here in Australia. All four of those things would have been better if they were done last year. The second best time to do them is now.

JAYES: Okay, it sounds like “now” might be tomorrow but we will wait and see that announcement. Finally before I let you go. I think people are really frustrated. I'm getting the feedback here on AM Agenda. There's so much politics in these lockdowns now. There's this political blame game that's shifting, and we've seen a bit of that in our conversation today. I mean, even on the front page of The Australian newspaper, we see some of these dirty bed linen, marked “positive COVID”, at the bottom of a residential building. I mean, that's not the federal government’s fault.

BURKE: I've heard the promo for that before I came on. I don't know anything more than what you promo’d but I’m glad you’re following it up, I'm glad you’re chasing it down. This is an issue that we can't take risks with. And this is why we were stunned yesterday in question time when Anthony Albanese asked Mr Morrison whether or not he takes any responsibility at all for the lockdown in Victoria. And his response was, “Oh no the lockdowns are a state responsibility”.

JAYES: Well they are in a way aren’t they?

BURKE: Well, if the Prime Minister does his job, and we have purpose-built quarantine, and we have a proper vaccine rollout, then you're not going to find state’s being confronted with the same crisis that they're confronted with in Victoria right now.

JAYES: Okay, Tony Burke, as always thanks for your time.

ENDS