TRANSCRIPT: TV INTERVIEW - SKY NEWS - JULY 21, 2021

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TELEVISION INTERVIEW
SKY NEWS WITH KIERAN GILBERT
WEDNESDAY, 21 JULY 2021

SUBJECTS: Sydney lockdown; Scott Morrison’s COVID failures; ATAGI’s independence.

KIERAN GILBERT, HOST: To the Manager of Opposition Business and Member for Watson, in Sydney, Tony Burke. Watson is around, Canterbury-Bankstown is right in the middle of your seat. How is the electorate holding up? I know you've stayed in Canberra because of your parliamentary duties as Manager of Opposition Business. But how's the electorate holding up as we speak?

TONY BURKE, MANAGER OF OPPOSITION BUSINESS: I’ve been, as you can imagine, on the phone constantly and you've had two of the state members, Jihad Dib and Sophie Cotsis, on Sky News explaining quite a bit there. Effectively the community has gone from scared, to confused, to increasingly angry. And people are going through now a harder lockdown than we’ve ever had before, and they're doing it with less support. You don't have the same support trying to make sure that people remain attached to their employer, you don't have the stimulus or supplement payments going in. There's a whole lot that was there last year for weaker lockdowns, that's not there now.

GILBERT: The Prime Minister says that in terms of support payments it is at the level of JobKeeper was in the December quarter of last year.

BURKE: By the end, that’s right, when they were starting to pull the whole thing back. You've also got to remember the other supplements that were there last time, through the payments system, also had a whole lot of stimulus money that was washing through the economy. So what we're dealing with now is a tougher lockdown, where all of that’s gone. And do not underestimate the impact of construction being shut down in an area like mine. We don't have the owners of the big construction firms but I'll tell you, you're hard-pressed to have to walk too many doors before you’re coming across a ute in my part of Sydney. And there's a lot of people that were able to keep working last time who this time can’t. And we all presumed when the Prime Minister went missing for five days that he was working on something. And then when the media conference was delayed and delayed this afternoon we thought there must be an announcement coming. But then he stands up, and there’s nothing new at all. No extra support at all. And, you know, it's been said before this bloke doesn't have a tin ear - there's a wall of concrete. And it is clear that he has no idea what's happening on the ground. He has no idea what's happening on the ground. Because if he had any understanding of the frustration that people are feeling, the knowledge that people have that if the vaccine rollout had happened properly we would have entered this winter in a radically different situation. And we wouldn't be seeing the extent of the lockdown that we're seeing now. And it's like none of that's happened. He doesn't need to announce anything new and he just wants to tell us the statistics about how we should all feel good about how things are going.

GILBERT: Do you want to see in simple terms, JobKeeper returned? Is that what you want to see?

BURKE: Something of that style. There's obviously tweaks you could do. You could make sure that businesses that do well don't get a huge windfall. You could make sure casuals don't get left behind. There are tweaks that you would make to it. But the principle here is making sure people remain attached to their employer. That the relationship between the worker and the employer remains. What the government's doing right now is a massive shift from people being paid through their payroll to being paid directly from government welfare. This matters, because if the lockdown is only a couple of weeks then you've got a brief period where you're getting paid through government payments. If this drags on, you end up with people becoming less and less attached to their employer. And that has a huge impact.

GILBERT: Would you like to see more of the Pfizer doses - while we're in this crisis period – go to your part of Sydney? To go to Fairfield, Chris Bowen’s electorate? Because this is where the COVID is, this is where the outbreak is worst. Should there be a focus to vaccinate those two electorates basically? You're talking about 200,000 people in Fairfield? I guess it's a similar amount in Canterbury-Bankstown -

BURKE: Canterbury-Bankstown is bigger yeah.

GILBERT: If we’re going to be getting a million Pfizer a week shouldn’t more be directed there in the short term to get those communities vaccinated?

BURKE: I would have thought that’s where the risk profile is far and away the strongest. And I don't want to feed into the AstraZeneca hesitancy, but here’s one of the key differences: AstraZeneca, you've got a longer gap between the two doses than you have with Pfizer, to be able to get to your level of immunity. If there's a vaccine, and there is, where the two doses can be delivered more quickly, then in terms of need it would seem to just make sense.

GILBERT: Would you like to see, like the Prime Minister made pretty blunt terms. ATAGI is independent but his message was quite blunt today. That they need to reassess the risk profile when it comes to AstraZeneca.

BURKE: I'm wary of what we saw happen there in that media conference. And I'll leave it to Mark Butler to go through the health policy aspect of it. But independent institutions are critical to public confidence. It really matters, and we do not want to get to a situation where the public believe that there can be political pressure put on the major health body on which we are relying. We are dealing with enough conspiracy theories and people thinking that there's other agendas behind health advice. We undermine the independence of ATAGI at our peril.

GILBERT: The Prime Minister was asked if he would say sorry about the vaccine rollout. He points out that there are many things that have happened, that he knows have not been ideal, but in large part were outside of the government's control. Do you accept that?

BURKE: Nothing's ever Scott Morrison's fault if you ask Mr. Morrison. Nothing's ever his fault. This is a bloke with a chronic inability to take responsibility for anything.

GILBERT: But ATAGI changed the advice, that was the independent agency. Europe blocking supplies, that was Europe.

BURKE: Yeah, and the decision to not contract with five or six different companies that were developing the vaccine? That was Mr. Morrison's decision. The fact that we have less support now in a tougher lockdown, that’s Mr. Morrison's decision. The challenges we're dealing with, with the fact that we have had 26 quarantine outbreaks and we still don't have a federal system of quarantine, that’s Mr. Morrison's decision. He had two jobs this year in terms of quarantine and vaccine. He hasn't done either. And people in my part of Sydney are living with those consequences.

GILBERT: Manager of Opposition Business and Member for Watson Tony Burke, I appreciate your time.

BURKE: Thanks for having me back.

ENDS