TRANSCRIPT: TV INTERVIEW - SKY NEWS WITH ALAN JONES - JULY 22, 2021

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TELEVISION INTERVIEW
SKY NEWS WITH ALAN JONES
THURSDAY, 22 JULY 2021

SUBJECTS: COVID lockdowns; Western Sydney.

ALAN JONES, HOST: Tony Burke is the federal Labor member for the seat of Watson. All of these people banned from working, tradies and others, dominate his electorate. And as he has said, “Western Sydney has become the epicentre. People here are genuinely scared. I am worried the government doesn't understand some of the unique dynamics driving transmission.” Tony Burke joins me from Canberra. Tony, thank you for your time. Look, just before I come to your electorate and the awful circumstances there, what do you make of the Prime Minister's intervention yesterday to the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation pleading with them to change their AstraZeneca advice? The Prime Minister said his government was making a “constant appeal” to the vaccine expert panel to reconsider the balance of risk. So the Prime Minister, having told us for 18 months to follow the advice of the science is now trying to alter the advice and influence the science. What do you make of this?

TONY BURKE, SHADOW MINISTER FOR INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS: I thought it was madness. Absolute madness. Like, what follows if that ATAGI committee now does change, and they're constantly reviewing, their next review, people will ask, well, was that affected by political interference? Or is it just a medical opinion? And that's the last thing we want. So, you know, you can't spend months and months and months, as Mr Morrison has, saying that we're just going to respect the science, and then stand up at a media conference and say, Well, this is what I as a politician want the science to do.

JONES: Tony, he said it was a constant appeal. So he's obviously been at this before. He said, I can assure you that it's a constant appeal, that the situation Australia faces should be managed on the balance of risk. Well shouldn't the Prime Minister tell everyone, what are the vaccine risks?

BURKE: Well, he should. But it's also the case that if you have an agency that's going to be independent, or a committee that's going to be independent, then let it be independent. If you don't want it to be independent, if you want it to be a political decision, then make it a political decision and own it personally. But this bridging of the two worlds, of saying, “Yeah, they're independent, and now I'm going to lean on them”. It just smashes public confidence. In simple terms it was a dumb thing to do.

JONES: Well, I mean, he says states shouldn't allow hundreds of thousands of AstraZeneca doses, many made in Australia, to go to waste. So the argument is, there's a lot of AstraZeneca. But the advice has been not for the under 60s. And the Prime Minister seems to be saying that, Oh, well, if you're under 60, talk to your doctor about getting the AstraZeneca. And I've been cynical here in order to push up the vaccination rates to make things look good politically. Is this about politics or health?

BURKE: Look, I don't know. And, and I think we're now asking these questions because of Mr Morrison's behaviour yesterday. I should, for the sake of transparency, say I've had my first AstraZeneca dose and I'll have my second. And I did that at the time when the risk profile said if you're over 50, and I'm 51, that's the one to do. And I went to my doctor on the first day it was available. So I don't want to skate over that.

JONES: I've had the AstraZeneca too. But I mean, let’s come to your electorate. I mean, the New South Wales Premier is saying no matter your circumstances, reduce your mobility. The strongest message we can give to everybody is to stay at home, don't have interaction with anybody outside your household. Thousands in your electorate often have no choice but to travel.

BURKE: There are some obviously, but there's not a lot of people in my part of Sydney who can do their jobs from the laptop at home. You know, these are households where, you know, they're bigger households than you get in other parts of Sydney. They're often intergenerational. And people have jobs that only work if you physically turn up. That's the entire nature of the job. And when the first message went out “only turn up if it's essential”. Well, for these individuals, they view it as essential, because that's how they pay their bills, that’s how they feed their family. I've yet to find someone, when that first description was given, who didn't think their job was essential.

JONES: Tony your people are multicultural. Sorry to interrupt you, but you've got people from all languages there. Are they getting the message? Has the government addressed the nature of their concerns? Do they understand even what the rules are?

BURKE: If you think the public communication campaign has been bad in the English-speaking media, multiply it by 20 for how bad it's been in multicultural communication. Now, most of the people in my electorate can speak English. But the language where when you're trying to get absolute precision and detail, that they're most comfortable with, will often be the language of their heritage and that's completely understandable. But last year when we had an outbreak in Lakemba, all the public communications that was done was me hitting the phone and getting a whole lot of community leaders to put out communications in their various languages on their social media channels because the government wasn't doing it. And if you go now to a whole lot of Members of Parliament, they're just doing it themselves to try to protect their community, because this is a community that wants to follow the rules.

JONES: Yes, yes, yes. Can I ask you one thing before you go? I mean, if government is going to issue a mandate, you can't move, you can’t go anywhere, don't leave your home, you can't go to work and so on. Shouldn't government, isn't government then obligated to say we will give you an appropriate payment, which will enable you to maintain a reasonable standard of living? Not 600 bucks a week?

BURKE: Oh, and let's not forget, when people say they've got mortgages, they've got payments, they've got a whole lot of financial commitments that they have to meet, when you're suddenly told “oh we're looking after you because we're offering you an amount of money that's below the minimum wage”. If the vaccination rollout had happened the way it's happened in other countries, if we'd kept to our milestones, we would not be in this situation now.

JONES: Good on you. We'll keep in touch. You hang in there. I mean, I think it's unbelievable. You're going to mandate that people can't go to work, can't move, stay in your home, then pay them a wage that's not 600 bucks a week. So there's some dignity and decency about their lifestyle. Take a break.

ENDS