TRANSCRIPT: TV INTERVIEW - ABC INSIDERS - 15 AUGUST 2021

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TELEVISION INTERVIEW
ABC INSIDERS WITH DAVID SPEERS
SUNDAY, 15 AUGUST 2021

SUBJECTS: Vaccinations in the workplace, COVID in Western Sydney, the arts sector in crisis, climate change.

DAVID SPEERS, HOST: Tony Burke, welcome to the program.

TONY BURKE, SHADOW MINISTER FOR INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS: Hi, David.

SPEERS: So vaccine supply is still an issue but when there is adequate supply, should employers be able to require their staff to be vaccinated?

BURKE: The comments you just heard from Sally McManus, which Jennifer Westacott joined in on as well, are exactly right: It needs to be a health decision. Where those health orders are put in place then we support them. But we don't want a situation where these rules are different from one workplace to the other, not based on a health reason but based on where an employer goes. You end up with a whole lot of arguments permeating throughout the community where we want a simple message encouraging people to get vaccinated. Wherever there is a health order to that effect, support it absolutely.

SPEERS: So where there is not a health order covering, for example, the food processing sector, should a company like SPC be able to mandate vaccines?

BURKE: If they end up with a health order, these health orders may change over time as we get new variants, or as the health advice changes, but those mandating issues should only come into play when there is a health order.

SPEERS: Why not provide a legal indemnity that means if an employer wants to mandate vaccination, they can?

BURKE: Well, you run into the exact problem I just described. You run into the exact problem of you get into this argument about mandating. At the moment we have a problem with supply, as you said at the start, and we can get into all of these discussions, but right now, we want people to get vaccinated. My community at the moment is going through an absolute crisis and we are desperately trying to get people vaccinated. I don't want to be side tracked by a mandating argument when we have a simple principle that if there are health orders, then they should be followed. And the health decision should guide where mandating occurs and where it doesn't.

SPEERS: But you can understand there are going to businesses there, small businesses, medium-sized businesses, where there is no health order for their sector, who are still very worried about wanting to make sure there is a safe workplace, wanting to put in place a mandate, because they want the right thing for their business, for their staff. Are you saying there shouldn't be a legal indemnity for them?

BURKE: What I'm saying is the National Cabinet provided a legal indemnity and the arguments there if they don't put a mandate in place. You need to keep these to health decisions. We saw in Parliament this week with George Christensen what happens when you don't have sensible health advice guiding your decisions. That is not just true in parliamentary speeches, it should also be true in every workplace in the country.

SPEERS: So you wouldn't support that sort of legal indemnity?

BURKE: What I support is for mandating to be determined by health orders. I just can't be clearer than that.

SPEERS: What about businesses who want to turn away customers who aren't vaccinated? It might be a bar, restaurant, hairdresser - should they be able to turn away people who aren't vaccinated?

BURKE: We might find that we end up with health orders for all of these sorts of examples but I don't want these decisions to be made randomly by politicians, or in different ways by different employers. I want them to be health decisions made by health orders. And what you just described, for different premises there may well be health arguments that are put there as different parts of the country come out of lockdown. But the mandating decision should be made through health orders. We need uniform principles throughout the country. One of the problems we have at the moment is confusion, where you have different rules already from one state to another, from one city to another, from one local government area to another. I don't want it to get where you have different rules from one workplace to another.

SPEERS: Let me talk about what's going on in your neck of the woods, your seat of Watson in Western Sydney. It covers a lot of the hardest hit suburbs right now. Why do you think case numbers are still rising and what do you think still needs to be done?

BURKE: My local community - more than half of my electorate is Canterbury-Bankstown. And people initially, I guess the progress has been that people were frightened, people were confused, and increasingly people are fed up and angry. You increasingly hear the frustration that, for the restrictions, the sickness and the deaths that are starting to come through in the community, it would not have happened if they had locked down Bondi. And there is a huge frustration about that. We also know it would not have happened if we had a proper quarantine system, it would not have happened if we had a proper vaccine rollout in the country. So you've got that frustration underlying it. We've also had terribly poor communication that has happened to people with rules changing and health advice not being provided in language. So what the community has done is they have just taken it over themselves. A whole lot of Arabic-speaking doctors have just put out their own communication in English and in Arabic. We've been having community online meetings where, and both the state and federal government have been good enough to provide us with the public servants. We've had Brigadier Garraway provided by the government to provide accurate information to the community.

SPEERS: Just on that, there was real concern about troops being deployed on the streets. How is that being received at the moment?

BURKE: Yes, the initial messaging that came out of the Government when it originally hit the media wouldn't have been worse because it was all about boots on the ground as though it was there as some enforcement measure blaming the community. At the same time, every weekend, the community would see images of people seemingly doing whatever they wanted at Bondi Beach. So there was a frustration there. One of the great things that Brigadier Garraway has been making clear in the online meetings is that they are not there in an enforcement role. You wouldn't know that from the way it was initially publicised. And we have been trying to get that information out so that they are now working - we have members of the Defence Force working side by side with communities putting together food packages. And the people requiring food packages this time in the local area, it is quite different to what we were doing 12 months ago. 12 months ago...

SPEERS: But aren't they also assisting police in the compliance checks?

BURKE: They are accompanying, so that when police who work in pairs can work on their own, but the enforcement work is done by the police officer, not by the member of the Defence Force.

SPEERS: Coming back to what still needs to happen, is there any clear step that you think representing that community that isn't there that still needs to happen to stop the spread?

BURKE: Can I give two key areas of things that need to happen: One is in support, one is in vaccination. In terms of support, one of the big shifts that the Mayor was telling me last night is as the food parcels have been going out, 12 months ago they were principally going out to overseas students and people on visas who weren't eligible for support. This time we are getting an increasing number of small business people who are receiving food packages because the support that they were meant to have qualified for hasn't come through yet, and that is a real shift. The second thing though, is we have been working really hard to get pop-up clinics on the ground. It was reported on this program only I think last week about the Lebanese Muslim Association, the LMA, getting a pop-up clinic and in three days getting 1000 people vaccinated. We've got one at the Orion Centre at Campsie today. We are trying to get one at the All Saints Greek Orthodox Parish at Belmore. People want to get vaccinated. The simplest example is this: at the Muslim Lebanese Association in Lakemba, we had someone in the middle of winter camp outside all night to make sure he didn't miss out the next day. At Bankstown Sports Club more than a hundred people have been turned away. These pop-up clinics work. People see people they know and one of the best ways to combat hesitancy about vaccines is for people to know you are getting vaccinated in your own community, at your local pharmacy, at your local doctor, but also at the pop-up clinics at places people already trust.

SPEERS: Just one more on this: you referenced the anger and frustration at Bondi not being locked down earlier. How do you think Western Sydney would feel about any easing of restrictions for the eastern suburbs, North Shore, where there is not so much COVID?

BURKE: Fury. Fury is the word. We are the home of essential workers. We don't have that many people who can do their work at home from a laptop. We have to go out into a whole lot of different parts of Sydney to work, to do essential work, to stack shelves, to drive vehicles, to work on logistics, to work in aged care. People work multiple jobs, they are in large households, trying to home-school. In many instances where there are more people than there are rooms in the home. The frustration of a double standard ... yeah, there would be fury.

SPEERS: We get the message. You are also the Shadow Minister for the Arts. The Government did announce a further $35 million for the arts this week, $20 million for the charity Support Act, $15 million for the Sustainability Fund. Is enough being done for the sector?

BURKE: Not nearly enough.

SPEERS: What needs to be happen?

BURKE: We're talking about a sector that is worth more than $100 billion to the economy, that's what the department itself says. The Support Act money, they are a great organisation, but effectively they are there to catch people after the damage has already been done. And additional money is for the companies that the minister has decided are significant. Which sends a message to the rest of the sector. Effectively you've got two problems. During lockdowns there is support there but as you come out of lockdowns, a whole lot of businesses have a problem with running because of the social distancing restrictions. To have a wage subsidy targeted is an important way of getting businesses to reopen on the other side. But the other thing that you need: government needs to consider an insurance system here. Have a think about this simple example: Businesses, whether they are really small or massive, can no longer get insurance against COVID-19. You can get it against COVID 20 or 21 but you can't get it against a disaster that is already there. If you are a festival, for example take Bluesfest, they were cancelled last year, they were cancelled this year the day before they were going to start. Now, the message now is you could be cancelled at any point because of understandable health restrictions. But you can't take that as a business risk. The impact will simply be no-one will take risk. And if we want businesses to get moving again and to take those risks they need to have a pathway through insurance. The Government has done this for the film industry. It has worked well. Why they won't do it for live performance is beyond me.

SPEERS: Finally, on the climate front this week. Labor, we know, is committed to net zero emissions by 2050. We still don't know how you get there, what your plans are to achieve that. This week the IPCC report was very clear about the need for urgent action. Can you at least answer this: is the Government's 2030 target ambitious enough?

Well, if I put it in these terms: effectively the 2030 target, industry is now on the trajectory that the Government aimed that low. The 2050 target.

SPEERS: No, no, 2030.

BURKE: I hear what you are saying, that's why I have responded the way I have.

SPEERS: Is it ambitious enough?

BURKE: No, no, we were always critical of it, but to adjust it now from Opposition is something that you just can't do.

SPEERS: I'm not asking for a number, I'm just asking is it ambitious enough. When you look at the US, the Europeans, what everyone else is doing?

BURKE: I've answered it twice by saying we've been critical of it. What I'm saying though, because this is relevant to right now as well, you can't view the 2050 target as something you start working towards in 2048. A 2050 target impacts investment decisions now. It impacts decisions from Government now. At the next election we will have a roadmap that involves decisions that would be taken now that have an impact on it. The fact that Mr Morrison won't commit to a 2050 target doesn't just say, "Oh, that determines what happens in a few decades." It determines the level of inaction now.

SPEERS: Okay, we will see where Labor lands on that. Tony Burke, thanks very much for joining us today.

BURKE: Great to be back.

ENDS