TRANSCRIPT: TV INTERVIEW - SKY NEWS - THURSDAY, 2 SEPTEMBER 2021

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TELEVISION INTERVIEW
SKY NEWS WITH LAURA JAYES
THURSDAY, 2 SEPTEMBER 2021

SUBJECTS: Vaccination rollout; national cabinet plan.

LAURA JAYES, HOST: The Member for Watson, Tony Burke, joins us as he does every week. Thanks so much for your time. There’s a bit of anxiety around this morning Mr Burke. Annastacia Palaszczuk, you would have noticed, has said kids will be vulnerable if she opens her state at 80 per cent vaccinated to New South Wales. Kids can't get vaccinated. So where does that leave us?

TONY BURKE, SHADOW MINISTER FOR INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS: Well, I think the points that the Premier of Queensland has made, do reflect a conversation that's happening among a whole lot of parents. I know that there's work being done, and we may find ourselves with a vaccination for under twelves. We're not there yet. Certainly countries like the United States and Canada had been taking preparatory work for months to make sure they've got enough doses if this does happen. Right now, from our perspective and Federal Labor obviously, we're supportive of implementing the national plan. And our position is for those who are eligible, we need to get them vaccinated as quickly as we possibly can. And the priority group, there's lots of priority groups that don't have planning seeming to happen for them at the moment. I know the relief that I felt, when you know, we've got someone in our household who wasn’t eligible until the 12 to 15s became eligible. And I can understand that there is an anxiety from parents wanting eligibility to be extended as far as possible, as fast as possible. Obviously, there's medical clinical trials, processes that have to happen before that can be can be realised.

JAYES: Yeah, and look, you can blame Scott Morrison for a lot, but you can't blame him for that now. Annastacia Palaszczuk is a Labor Premier, you are a Labor member? Do you not have any leverage with her? You know, we're at a time where we're crying out for leadership. You hammer the Prime Minister on this each and every day. And, you know, you say the anxieties and the conversations, they just don't stack up with the facts, the lived experience. So you're sticking to national plan, but she isn’t. Do you have any power?

BURKE: Well, the area where she's being accused of not sticking to the national plan is the same accusation that's made against premier McGowan and is with respect to state borders. Now, I'm not sure where within the national plan there's a specific reference to state borders. And when Queensland themselves today have had one case, I can see that when they're being told it's all about opening up interstate, you know, in my part of Sydney, the opening up that people want us to be able to see someone who lives two blocks away.

JAYES: But on that because this is now two years, Tony Burke. We’ve seen two countries around the world, maybe three that have reached an 80% vaccination rate. I mean, if not at 80%, when do we get this country back together and stop the division?

BURKE: I think that what we'll see is, like what people want to be able to do and what public policy needs to make sure we can do at every level of government, is to make sure that we're opening up safely. That's really important. And that sort of test will be different -

JAYES: Is it not safe at 80 per cent?

BURKE: What I'm saying is, the exact implications of that will be different in different parts of the country, in terms of where you're already at and where your hospital system’s at. You know, we've had Premier Berejiklian now flag a few days in a row what October's going to look like for the hospital system in Sydney. And the test here - and this is where even people like myself who've been fully vaccinated - we still for our health, even though we're very much protected against COVID, we still have a situation where we need a hospital system that isn't already overwhelmed if anything else goes wrong with our health. That is what we’re looking down the barrel of.

JAYES: I get the issues in New South Wales, and you're absolutely right to bring those up, but Gladys Berejiklian is not saying that the hospital system will not cope and collapse all together. Look at the situation in WA, Mark McGowan has stopped some elective surgeries because he's even worried about the thought of COVID. They have zero COVID cases and their hospital system there doesn't even seem to be coping. I mean, whose fault is that?

BURKE: Well, what we find with the hospital system everywhere is you do need to engage in planning and these issues -

JAYES: They’ve had 18 months though.

BURKE: And this is our exact criticism we made in in Parliament yesterday- yesterday or the day before – over the failure to train people to be able to run ventilators. We have a situation now, I know I'm back to Sydney but you'll understand why I'm concerned there, where we have all these extra ventilators and we don't have the trained staff to be able to operate them. And we're now looking at, we're now in September and we're being told October is the peak time. Like the planning here, some of it is on shifting elective surgery, a whole lot of it is on training people on how we’ve ended up -

JAYES: A lot of it is blame shifting as well. I mean, Anthony Albanese just tweeted “The Prime Minister needs to make sure our hospitals have the resources and stuff they need to cope”. I get an a pandemic everyone pitches in. But the states are ultimately responsible for the hospitals, aren't they? If they need help they reach out.

BURKE: Let's not forget as well, taking New South Wales, the states are responsible for the hospitals but the federal government was meant to be responsible for the vaccination of the aged care workforce, of the NDIS workforce, of remote communities. And state resources are now having to go to all of that. So I've got to say, I don't think it's open to the federal government to say “Oh, no, the hospitals state are entirely the states” and they don't have to do extra there when the states are already carrying a whole lot of extra load because of federal government neglect.

JAYES: Okay, well, we'll pursue those issues another time. Tony Burke, as always, thanks for your time. We'll see you soon.

ENDS