TRANSCRIPT: TV INTERVIEW - SKY NEWS - THURSDAY, 26 AUGUST 2021

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TELEVISION INTERVIEW
SKY NEWS WITH LAURA JAYES
THURSDAY, 26 AUGUST 2021

SUBJECTS: Western Sydney COVID outbreak; Delta variant; Doherty modelling.

LAURA JAYES, HOST: Tony Burke, thanks so much for your time. We know that everyone in LGA’s of concern want a vaccine, it would seem, including in your electorate of Watson. Is it getting easier or harder to get a vaccine?

TONY BURKE, SHADOW MINISTER FOR INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS: People are able to book but there are areas where it's working okay and there are areas where it's been a complete shemozzle. So you still find some people trying to book and having to wait a long time. If you're a lot of people aged 12 to 15 at the moment - most people are not eligible but there are some people with underlying health conditions who are – most simply haven't been able to get an appointment at all. And we have one of the centres in Lakemba that I raised in question time yesterday, that's actually run by the federal government, that's been running out of vaccines and going to other GPs and others in the area trying to borrow vaccines to keep up with demand. Ultimately, people are wanting to get vaccinated. And they know that if supply had been available months ago we wouldn't be in the mess we're in now. And still, even with this situation, they're waiting weeks and months. And for some people, that's the key to their safety, give that they’re still in essential work.

JAYES: Tony Burke, I know you've had a close eye on what's happening in New South Wales. Indeed, we all have. But what do you think when you see these numbers out of Victoria today, 80 new cases, more than half infectious in the community? Now, Daniel Andrews did not waste a moment, he locked down hard and fast. And still, it appears he cannot get these cases under control. What does that tell us about living with the Delta variant?

BURKE: Well, we also need to remember that previously there was a Delta strain in Victoria, when it had come from a quarantine breach there. And on that occasion, the fast lockdown did work, and they were able to get rid of it. On this occasion, we don't know how many different cases from New South Wales have made their way into Victoria. But the numbers today are really alarming.

JAYES: But that doesn’t really change where we're at, does it Tony? Because, I mean, if they cannot get it under control, we need to look at this thing in a different way. I mean, a lot of Premiers are focused on zero COVID. Is that realistic?

BURKE: Well, that's why I gave the example of what happened with Victoria with the initial Delta outbreak, where they did manage to eradicate it. And with New South Wales now, you know, we are now seeing numbers higher in New South Wales than we've seen anywhere else. That’s been bleeding into Victoria. Even New Zealand has a problem as a result of this. And so, you know, we want to be able to get through this safely. And we want to be able to get through this competently. And I know you quite reasonably keep saying, but what do we do from here? But we can't ignore the fact as to why we are here. And we would not be in this mess if we had fit-for-purpose quarantine, we would not be in this mess if there'd been a proper vaccine rollout earlier. And we would not be in this mess if right at the very beginning there'd been a lockdown in Bondi, because at that point you didn't have a whole lot of cases going into one state from another. You had an identical situation to what Victoria had seen earlier when they did get rid of a Delta strain.

JAYES: Indeed, but we are in this situation right now, Tony Burke, and I think it was a fair question for Josh Frydenberg to pose just the other day, he said, if we don't start to learn to live with COVID, no one's talking about letting it rip, if we don't start to learn to live with COVID when we're 80% vaccinated, then when?

BURKE: Oh well, the concept of what's in that Doherty Institute document has been accepted by all levels of government and by the opposition.

JAYES: Has it though? It doesn’t seem like Queensland and WA have accepted it at all.

BURKE: Well, they've signed up to it, they've agreed with it. And there's a particular spin on it, an interpretation of it, that the Prime Minister's put on, which is to say that at 80% that there'd never again be any form of a lockdown. Which understandably, even Simon Birmingham has been saying, that's not what the document says.

JAYES: Okay, that’s fair enough. Because it does say localised lockdowns, but not these state-wide ones we're seeing at the moment. You've seen the Doherty modelling. We talked about it day in day out. So once we do get to 80% fully vaccinated in this country, what does it look like? Would you be telling your constituents you need to accept that there are going to be deaths?

BURKE: Well, I think you have a health system that does everything it can to fight deaths. So, I don't think you ever frame it quite the way you described, you still have a hospital system trying to make sure that we save every possible life that we can. The challenge that we have in Sydney right now is that hospital system is already being overwhelmed. Now there is a lag between when the case numbers are announced and when the hospital admissions start. And obviously, the hospital admissions are going to be higher for the people who have not yet been able to get vaccinated. Much higher and much more dangerous for them. So there's a lived experience right now of the pace at which it's ripping through the community in Western Sydney and southwest Sydney in particular, but throughout all of Sydney and much of New South Wales, and going into the other states as well. But there's a pressure that we really can't overlook here, where when you've got ambulance after ambulance stuck on the ramp, not able to get into the hospital, and the ambulance drivers and the paramedics just sitting there waiting, because they can't leave the patient until the patient's able to have a bed. Where you've got reports today of people in Westmead and Blacktown being sent as far away as North Shore Hospital. There is a challenge right now that I just think we can't - and I'm not saying you're doing this in any way - but we've got to be really careful to not be flippant in terms of the phrase “living with COVID”. Where, right at this moment, there is a crisis going on, being lived, being experienced, which is putting the health of everyone at risk. You know, if you're in Sydney right now, and you're fully vaccinated, if you need to go to a hospital for another purpose, the vaccination doesn't mean that you might not find that the hospital’s already overwhelmed. And we should have been a much stronger position before we reached winter. And this is where we are at.

JAYES: Tony Burke we’ll have to leave it there. Thank you for your time.

ENDS