Transcript - Sky News Interview with Kieran Gilbert

E&OE TRANSCRIPT 
TELEVISION INTERVIEW
AFTERNOON AGENDA WITH KIERAN GILBERT
THURSDAY, 2 APRIL 2020

SUBJECTS: Government’s early learning package; Cruise ship Artania; Foodbank donations.

HOST, KIERAN GILBERT: Welcome back to the program. Let's go live to Perth once again now. Joining me is the Federal Labor MP, Patrick Gorman. Pat, thanks very much for your time. I want to start with the childcare announcement because I know it's something that you've argued for - there needed to be greater assistance in the childcare sector. What do you make of this? I think the Government surprised everyone. It's really done everything the sector had asked for - they are basically underwriting childcare for the next six months.

PATRICK GORMAN, LABOR MP: Yes. It surprised me too. And it's very welcome. This is sort of the best end of the possible outcomes that we could have seen for the childcare sector and more importantly for working parents. This means that people can continue where they are fortunate enough to still have a job, to be able to put their kids in high quality education and care and we can keep hundreds of thousands of educators in jobs, because this is an essential part of our economy. The childcare sector does make sure that people can work and that we're training the minds of the next generation. I was watching the Prime Minister's announcement and I never thought I'd hear the words out of his mouth that childcare will be free, but he said that. It's a great announcement. It's the sort of practical, common sense thing that we needed to see. I congratulate the Prime Minister and I also congratulate Amanda Rishworth who's been working very hard with the sector to advocate their concerns and make sure that it was known by all that we needed a special package for the childcare sector.

HOST: And the Government talks about having the nation, the economy, but I think this reflects their approach in childcare as well - essentially, hibernation in the normal way of going about things because, quite frankly, if this sort of package wasn't delivered there would have been so many shut their doors and then how do you reignite that is a sector in six, eight months away.

GORMAN: Well that was the message we were getting everywhere including in my electorate of Perth. People, educators and centre directors, and parents were saying we're worried that the centres are not going to open tomorrow because they don't have the reserve, the cash reserves. I remember it was just two weeks ago that I had centres worried, contacting me, because they couldn't get food, because of the various runs on the supermarkets. And then we now have the challenge without saying we're going to run out of cash. So it's really welcome. It's very practical. I know that when I signed my son Leo into day care every morning, I was seeing the number of absences on the list as we signed him in, getting higher and higher and higher. I know that was smashing the bottom line of thousands of childcare centres across the country, so this is really welcome. And it was really good to see this announcement from the Prime Minister and Minister Tehan and it's already been welcomed by many centres in my electorate.

HOST: I want to ask you in a moment about something that you and other MPs - Liberal and Labor MPs - are doing in support of food charities. That's essentially why we organised our chat today. But before we get to that there's another new story in WA that we should refer to and that's this cruise ship, Artania. What's the latest on that? At the moment, it seems that Mark McGowan is saying basically this is a federal issue but it continues to be a stalemate, doesn't it?

GORMAN: Well I don't think anyone in Western Australia or indeed anyone in the Commonwealth Government is in any doubt of Premier McGowan's view, which has been the ship should leave and it should leave now. The State Government has been incredibly co-operative in making sure that people who needed to get off that ship for medical needs have been provided with that and that was a joint State and Commonwealth exercise. But what feels like a nontransparent game from the captain of that ship, I think they should just get moving. They've been provided with medical supplies. The best thing the crew on that ship is to start sailing their home port immediately.

HOST: Right, now to the issue of Foodbank. I think it's a great initiative that yourself, Ed Husic, other MPs I know on both sides of politics, are really getting behind this issue. Explain to our viewers why the food charities need this support right now, and what MPs are doing in that regard?

GORMAN: Well Foodbank is the primary provider for hundreds of charities. Here in Western Australia, Foodbank provides 400 different charities with regular supplies of food, so they can go about their business. Now what's happened is that often they would rely on canned drives and food drives in offices, and of course when you've got so many corporate officers who have now gone to remote working that's dried up. So they need about, here in Western Australia for example, about seven and a half tons of food donated a week, on top of everything that is done from the resources sector. And I note that the Chamber of Minerals and Energy here in WA today announced another $6 million dollars of assistance. But they need that community assistance too. And that's why people like myself, Ed Husic, and Matt O'Sullivan a Liberal senator here in Western Australia and like, so many others I really shouldn't name anyone, so many are doing things, but we try to make sure we're using our offices and other things and our connections with the community to say let's try and make sure we continue that supply of food and some people might have thought a little bit more than they need in recent weeks and if you've got something in the cupboard that's giving you a little bit of guilt every time you open it up and you see too many pasta packets and you want to do something about it just give it to Foodbank. They've got drive through donations. You don't need to have any human contact and it makes a huge difference.

HOST: And as you said, I mean this is a time when they'd be needed as much if not more than ever. And it's a time when they're not getting those corporate donations for obvious reasons with many people working from home.

GORMAN: That's right. And I think if anyone would normally be doing a Foodbank donation through their work, they might think about doing something in their personal or in their community. The other thing that Ed Husic and myself and others has discussed is whether we need to start looking at having a portion of our food production in Australia allocated to food charities that might only be one or two per cent but it would ensure that those food charities are spending their time distributing food to people who need it most, rather than spending their time trying to figure out where that food is coming from when all of their normal supply chains and their normal donor relationships have fallen apart. So it's definitely something worth thinking about, is whether we can actually allocate a certain proportion of food, to those food charities just for the next six months so they can get through - because their demand is also skyrocketing. Some reports that I've had an increase of 50 per cent in demand and I know when I went out to Perth Airport to drop off the 434 kilos of food that we had collected last week, they said to us that they had some shortages. So that normal mix of food wasn't coming through. One of the things I couldn't believe was they had a shortage of pasta sauce which is obviously a staple for so many families. So there's a lot we can do in this space. And one thing might be as myself and Ed Husic have suggested is allocate a certain portion of Australia's food production so that none of those charities run out.

HOST: Patrick Gorman, I appreciate your time live from Perth. Thanks so much for that.

ENDS