TRANSCRIPT: TV INTERVIEW - SKY NEWS - MONDAY, 23 AUGUST 2021

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TELEVISION INTERVIEW
SKY NEWS WITH KIERAN GILBERT
MONDAY, 23 AUGUST 2021

SUBJECTS: COVID outbreaks; vaccination rollout.

KIERAN GILBERT, HOST: Tony Burke, welcome. The Prime Minister really asserting that Labor is opposed to the national plan. Can I get clarification from you? Do you think the plan as put forward by the national cabinet is well placed, upon the Doherty research?

TONY BURKE, MANAGER OF OPPOSITION BUSINESS: Yeah, this was weird. This was the Prime Minister just desperately trying to get into a fight with someone. We haven't been litigating the national plan. We've got a few problems though. One problem is every few weeks, Mr Morrison has a new plan. Now, if you're trying to build confidence, and you're trying to let the Australian people have some hope for what's coming, you can't keep changing the plan every couple of weeks. Remember it’s not that long ago we were talking about the horizons document? Well, that's gone now. And horizons, by definition, were things that you were never going to reach. There was a plan before that, there was a four stage plan that was followed by another four stage plan. There was an app that we were told was like sunscreen. There's a new idea all the time that then dominates the media. Australians want to know what's going on. Australians want to know what the pathway forward is. Australians want to know, how do we get out of lockdown?

GILBERT: He's saying the 70-80% vaccination thresholds, we've got to get there to get to the next step, or the next phase of the roadmap out. That's the way that the National Cabinet described it, that’s the way the Prime Minister again asserts today that we need to get to those 70-80% thresholds. Does Labor agree with that?

BURKE: Well, there's two different things. One, the Doherty modelling itself makes reference to presumptions of there being lower case numbers in the country. So we're trying to get to the bottom of that. Today in question time we asked the Prime Minister about exactly that. And he says, he got new advice over the weekend. And then he holds up a document in question time and reads from the advice. We ask him to make it public - he refuses. And the next minute he's saying all it was just oral advice given over the weekend. What on earth was a document he was reading? The story hasn't just been changing every couple of weeks - in question time today it changed in the space of 10 minutes.

GILBERT: So do you feel that the PM is trying to box Labor into the position of being the lockdown merchants essentially?

BURKE: He's desperate for that fight. Desperate for that.

GILBERT: But if that's the case, why would you, I mean, that's not going to hurt you in Queensland and WA is it?

BURKE: Well, let's not forget if the pathway out of all of this is vaccination. We've been running the community education campaigns in our electorates that the government didn't run. We've been arguing the whole way through that they've been too slow on vaccination. We were arguing last year that they needed to sign more contracts and sign them earlier to get the vaccination rollout moving more quickly. The reason with the latest national plan, there's one reason why it's so far behind: Mr Morrison didn't do his job.

GILBERT: And as we look at the months ahead, obviously, this period of uncertainty until we get to those 70-80% thresholds. Does Labor, do you want to see children included within that percentage before we start to open up? The experts say it's a disease of the unvaccinated. Kids, as we know, up to this point, are unvaccinated.

BURKE: We want to open up as soon as we safely can. It's as simple as that. Mr Morrison's electorate might not be in lockdown but mine is. My neighbours, my community are in the most vicious form of lockdown right now. We want to get out of this as soon as we can get out of it safely. And so we're trying to get from Mr Morrison, well, what does that mean? Now you've just raised one of the issues with respect to children. You know, there's no vaccine at the moment authorised for the under-12s. ATAGI is still working through what happens for 12 to 15. But what does that mean in terms of are they counted within the 70 to 80%? There's a logic here that he apparently has advice. He apparently has something that was on a document one minute and the next minute was oral advice, that will determine the future of Australians and when we can get out of this safely. And he wants to use it in a partisan fashion in the parliament and then keep it secret the moment he’s had his hit. I just thought today we saw the worst of Mr Morrison's character.

GILBERT: Tony Burke I appreciate your time.

ENDS