TRANSCRIPT: PRESS CONFERENCE - CANBERRA - JULY 1, 2021

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
DOORSTOP INTERVIEW
PARLIAMENT HOUSE, CANBERRA
THURSDAY, 1 JULY 2021

SUBJECTS: Vaccinations; Quarantine; COVID-19 disaster payments; National Archives.

TONY BURKE, SHADOW MINISTER FOR INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS: We’re seeing now a disastrous debate going on and confusion about what people should be doing with respect to vaccines at a time where we already have vaccine hesitancy at dangerous levels throughout Australia. This morning, the Trade Minister Simon Birmingham gave away, and finally acknowledged what Labor has been saying for a long time. The claims that we were at the front of the queue on vaccines were not true. We’ve made the point for a while that from where Australia was positioned, you couldn’t even see the front of the queue. And Simon Birmingham has now acknowledged, Australia is at the back of the queue on vaccines. This government had two jobs this year. To provide purpose-built national quarantine facilities, and to roll out the vaccine. It has failed at both. The problems that we’re seeing at the moment did not start with the Prime Minister’s shambolic media conference late on Monday night – they started with a Prime Minister who would not do his two jobs. Two jobs he had this year – quarantine and vaccine. And every challenge we are seeing in Australia right now relates back to those two failures.

JOURNALIST: General Frewen said today that 2,600 under-40s have had AstraZeneca just in the last two days. So is there a positive you can see that this could actually have been helpful to get more people vaccinated?

BURKE: I’m not going to provide health advice – I think that’s one of the mistakes that Mr Morrison made on Monday night. The health advice should be provided by the health experts. And on Monday night he seemed to depart from the advice that had been provided to date from ATAGI and ATAGI continued with this morning. So, I’m not going to provide the health advice. Certainly I’ve had my first AstraZeneca shot and I’m scheduled to have my second. We want people to be vaccinated – but there is a reason why we are only choosing between two vaccines at the moment. And that’s because the government didn’t do its job. Last year, Labor was saying to the government world’s best practice is to have four or five different contracts with vaccines. Mr Morrison decided that Australia only needed two. His complacency on quarantine is the reason we are seeing breakouts. His complacency on the vaccine is the reason why Australia is the worst in the whole of the OECD when it comes to people being fully vaccinated.

JOURNALIST: A number of Labor Premiers want to cut the caps for returning Australians and permanent residents until we get Pfizer in the last quarter of the year. Can I get your thoughts on that please?

BURKE: Those decisions need to be based on the health advice. So I’m not going to get to the specifics of that. But I will say once again – the only reason we are having a conversation at all about possibly needing to make it even harder for Australians to return home is because we don’t have dedicated quarantine facilities. We have facilities that were built for tourism. And we are trying to deal with a highly contagious virus. We have facilities that are located in the most populated parts of our nation. And we are dealing with the highly contagious Delta strain of this virus. So I won’t deal with the specifics of what Premiers are calling for, because that needs to be worked through with the health advice But I will say this. The only reason that discussion is occurring at all is because Mr Morrison didn’t do his job. If he’d done his job on quarantine, we wouldn’t now be having a difficult conversation about stranded Australians. If he’d done his job on the vaccine, then we wouldn’t have the problems that we have now, where there are only two possible vaccines to choose from.

JOURNALIST: Mr Burke, Sydneysiders from today will be able to access the government’s $325 - $500 a week coronavirus disaster payments – but there’s a lot of qualifications on that, around the assets that you have and not receiving other government payments. Do you think that those qualifications are a sensible idea when they could encourage people to go to work whilst sick if they can’t access the government money?

BURKE: What I worry about is that we’re going to see people lose their connection to their employer. When we had JobKeeper – with all the problems with its design, its purpose was to keep people connected to the employer. These disaster relief payments don’t do that. They’re also structured in a way where, for business, to get support there is a turnover test and not an assets test. If you’re a worker, a collapse in your turnover in terms of your income isn’t enough. So anyone who thinks lockdowns in future are going to be like the lockdowns of last year – no. Government has deliberately designed this to leave a lot more people behind. But once again, you get right back to the first principles here – the only reason we’re talking about lockdowns at all is because Mr Morrison did not do his job on quarantine or vaccine.

JOURNALIST: Is it your position we should have a reintroduction of JobKeeper?

BURKE: We were concerned and made the concern at the time that there should have been a way of dealing with those industries where you couldn’t specifically target it, but were still doing it very tough at the time. But in whatever structure there is you use, one of the tests that you need to consider – and I hope these lockdowns are not prolonged – but if they are, if they do go for a longer period of time, we do want to make sure that people remain connected to their workplace. That’s the objective. There’s a few different policy ways of getting to that destination, but if you don’t get there, then the other side of the shutdown becomes deeply problematic for a whole lot of workers and for the people they work for.

JOURNALIST: Just on the National Archives if I can - $67 million announced to preserve the collection there – do you think that’s enough and what would Labor do?

BURKE: Only the National Archives, as an organisation, can make clear whether this is sufficient – the one thing I can say though in terms of the difference in our approach on these issues and the government’s approach – the government always needs to be dragged there when it comes to preserving Australian stories and preserving Australian history. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the archives, whether it’s our other collecting institutions, or whether it’s something as simple as Australian stories being told on film and TV. Every chance the government gets, their first attempt is to trash our history. They’ll run a culture war where they can, but if it’s about Australians actually hearing our stories, preserving documents, preserving the history of the nation – this government only gets there if they are dragged there. And next time Mr Morrison tries to do something jingoistic and patriotic, just remember what they tried to get away with in terms of allowing the historic records of this nation to just deteriorate with time. Thank you.

ENDS