TRANSCRIPT: TV INTERVIEW - SKY NEWS - 5 AUGUST 2021

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TELEVISION INTERVIEW
SKY NEWS WITH LAURA JAYES
THURSDAY, 5 AUGUST 2021

SUBJECTS: Vaccination rollout.

LAURA JAYES, HOST: Tony Burke, thanks a lot for your time. Incentives aside, we don’t have enough vaccines to give to under 40s. What is the opposition calling on the government to do to make that faster?

TONY BURKE, SHADOW MINISTER FOR INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS: I think the introduction you went through then Laura really says it all. We have a supply problem and the supply problem is preventing everything else from being able to be implemented. The government says we're looking at December - by then everybody who needs a vaccine, everybody would be able to get vaccinated. But all the problems we have right now, and when we've gone to different arguments about should we mandate, what age groups should we make – you just can't fix those problems at the moment without supply. And this goes all the way back to a year ago. It’s not like we’ve come late to this argument. All the way back to more than a year ago when we were arguing – and Chris Bowen then as shadow health was making clear – world’s best practice was signing agreements with five or six different companies or more, and Australia wasn't doing it. And we've ended up in a situation now we're even though we were told we're at the front of the queue, we weren't. We're at the bottom of the queue, we're at the bottom of the table. And that means that when you get health advice, like what came out from the Doherty Institute, making the exact points about people who are under 40, essential workers, we simply don't have the supply to be able to vaccinate them at the moment. And that goes directly to decisions that were taken by Mr Morrison.

JAYES: Well we find ourselves in this situation now and all that criticism is fair, but what can the government do now? Do you accept that it is now completely out of their hands and under 40s just simply have to wait?

BURKE: First thing for the government is: this is a race. It always has been a race. It is a race right now, and we're losing. And we need as a nation to get in front again. That means the government needs to use all the powers that government has to be able to get more vaccine supply here in Australia. We've seen reports over the last 12 months of what other countries have done to be able to make sure that they could get supply for their country. We need that now. Because if I look at my part of Sydney, it's the exact examples you gave, of people disproportionately in the areas where the infection rate at the moment is at its highest, are essential workers. And what we saw, horrifically, yesterday is what we are dealing with: age is no barrier; good health is no barrier. The barrier that people need is vaccines. And we need the government to fix the supply problem.

JAYES: Instead of talking about incentives why aren't you – or is Labor - asking where these million vaccines a week are from CSL that were promised earlier? And apparently we've got this flood of AstraZeneca. It's almost become a dirty word because of the hesitancy that some experts have created. I mean, surely there's a fix there.

BURKE: First of all, in terms of AstraZeneca, I'll say and I think I think I've said this every week that I've had the chance to be on your show. I’ve had the first AstraZeneca dose, I’ll be getting the second AstraZeneca dose. The best vaccine for people to get is the one they can get, whatever it might be. We do have supply problems across the country. But people if they're concerned should check with their doctor, but we need people to get vaccinated. It doesn't just protect them. It protects their family and the whole country.

JAYES: Have you asked this question about CSL? A million a week. We should be absolutely swimming in it, it should be not just allocating an extra 150,000 to Queensland of AstraZeneca. We should have millions in every state shouldn’t we?

BURKE: Well we should. But it's also, when you say swimming in it – even with that level of supply, that’s still no enough to be able to fully vaccinate the population, it’s still not enough to be able to do what needs to be done for the under 40s. So we need to be doing everything we can to get the existing supply out. In my community now you've started to get pharmacists being able to deliver it now, and that's helping. You ran on the program a couple of days ago the Bankstown Sports Club now having their centre, we've had the Lebanese Muslim Association, we had the Orion Centre at Campsie, we're trying to get one up at Parry Park. So trying to get as many different points of supply, and wherever possible at the sorts of places that people would already be going to, helps get the vaccine out.

JAYES: Just finally a 27-year-old man has died. He was healthy. He’d just been married. He'd had COVID for 13 days. And then he died suddenly. I mean, this is a reality for young people now. And you have experts like the Queensland CHO saying she doesn't want people under 60 to get an AstraZeneca vaccine. What do you say?

BURKE: Well, on this I can very much speak for my part of Sydney, which is in the absolute worst of this outbreak. And that is to say the best vaccine if you're in that part of Sydney is the one you can get. And I'm just encouraging everybody to get vaccinated. And what that horrific story that you described from this week, the loss of that is just a reminder. You know, getting vaccinated isn't just how we avoid lockdowns. It's how we stay alive.

JAYES: Tony Burke, thanks so much for your time today.

ENDS