Transcript - Sky News with Tom Connell - Thursday, 4 February 2021
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
SKY NEWS WITH TOM CONNELL
THURSDAY, 4 FEBRUARY 2021
SUBJECTS: WA lockdown; Canberra dining; JobSeeker increase.
TOM CONNELL, HOST: Let's get to the situation in WA, of course. One Labor MP who was supposed to be here that decided, well, it was all getting a bit too hard with all those restrictions, and partly because he is, I will add as well, just become a father for the second time, Patrick Gorman, and he joins me now live. Thanks very much for your time.
PATRICK GORMAN, SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR WESTERN AUSTRALIA: Morning Tom.
CONNELL: I want to reflect on his preparedness for all of this, because we had what seemed to be some lecturing from Mark McGowan to us devils over here in the east. It turns out that there wasn't testing of quarantine workers daily, even though the AHPPC said that should happen. That quarantine workers could still have other jobs, for example, as a ride share worker, as this person was, even though Victoria managed to stop that happening. And they didn't even have proper mask wearing rules for those security guards in quarantine. Why wasn't WA ready?
GORMAN: Well, I think we're going to find out a lot of those details with the inquiry the Premier McGowan has announced. Now, obviously, every time something happens across Australia, we are learning from this virus is evolving as a result. Of course, our response to the virus needs to evolve. Thankfully, we have seen updates with regards to the changes to mask working in hotels, that is common sense and it's good to see that that's changed, obviously on I think the 29th of January, the State Government started testing all of their hotel workers every day rather than every week. We are going to learn things. And indeed, I commend Premier McGowan and Health Minister Roger Cook, who have also said that they take responsibility. That's what leaders do in a crisis. They take responsibility and stands in stark contrast to Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton, who are always happy to shed blame to the states. I mean, it wasn't that long ago that we had the Prime Minister using terms like the "Victorian wave". I'm glad that he's learned a lesson in terms of how he talks about Western Australia. He's been much more supportive that he was in some of those terrible days in Victoria. So that's a good thing, a step in the right direction.
CONNELL: Let's talk more about the leadership you just mentioned there. This is what the premier also said, "obviously, we went for 10 months without a case. This is a shock to all of us." How is a COVID case happening when people are turning overseas in hotel quarantine a shock for the Government? Again, surely they should have been ready and expecting this.
GORMAN: Well, if you look at how they responded when the case did emerge, they clearly were ready. They have distributed stocks of their PPE to community groups. They had a clear plan about how we would do this five day lockdown. They have clearly been watching what happened in Queensland. And I just saw the good news from Minister Yvette D'ath in terms of Queensland, partly as a result of that lockdown that they initiated, that now they have run 29 days without community transmission and I congratulate all Queenslanders, particularly those in Brisbane, for that achievement. We clearly do continue to learn. But again, as the Health Minister here himself said, something did go wrong and we can't run away from that. The Premier and Health Minister fronted up for a 90 minute press conference day after day , taking questions to go through what they know. It's the appropriate response and a mature response in the middle of a crisis.
CONNELL: Anyone in Victoria will be saying, well, did you learn? One of the key things was people having other jobs. This security guard was a ride share driver. Victoria stopped that happening. Other people having other jobs if they work in hotel quarantine. They're just saying we haven't learnt. That's fair enough, isn't it?
GORMAN: Look, I don't think we're going to see people working second jobs if they're working in hotel quarantine anywhere in the country from this week forward. That's a good thing. We can't go back and change the past. I'm pleased that won't be continuing in the future. It is also clearly a sign about the difficulty we have in the insecure work environment we have here in Australia at the moment. We've seen commentary today about JobSeeker not being enough to support people. The Governor of the Reserve Bank has said that he thinks that needs to be a long term increase. People are working multiple jobs because they can't get by in the employment environment we currently have. So thankfully, we are going to see an increase in pay for hotel apparently workers. I think people are concerned about that. I think that's reasonable. I don't want to sugarcoat this. They shouldn't be working second jobs. I'm glad that's fixed. It doesn't appear, though, and I think this is an important thing for your viewers, it doesn't appear that in this case it was second jobs that was the reason for spread.
CONNELL: I understand that.
GORMAN: ... for that particular individual.
CONNELL: That's only luck is the point to that.
GORMAN: He went to the gym, he got a haircut. He went to Coles. These are all places in my electorate. I really feel for the people in Maylands, in my electorate, where, all of a sudden, they've found their supermarket, their chemist, their hairdresser are like the hot spot in Perth. It's been a really tough time for them. And they have sort of taken it, you know, in an incredibly strong and stoic way. They haven't sat around saying, "oh, we wish the Government had done this" or "let's go back in time and change these things". They've just said "what are we got to do? Let's get on with it." And they've done a fantastic job. So well, again, I say thank you to everyone in Maylands and across the broader Perth community for just doing the right thing, and masking up, staying home and hopefully we'll have some good news at 6p.m. on Friday.
CONNELL: Let's talk about the Wild Duck dinner, the Otis Group dinner, if you like. Look, I know what you're going to say. People have dinner. Factions have dinner and so on. But is it interesting that there's still this determination to clearly leak out the location of the dinner, some of the mutterings as well, that there is a group of MPs, that it seems no matter what, will be chipping away at Anthony Albanese's leadership?
GORMAN: Well, you stole my line, Tom. You can interview yourself. People do have dinner and they do have views, and political parties are robust democracies where people think about things, talk about the best way through, talk about how they feel about things. I think the fact that they had a dinner and, I don't know who, one anonymous person said 'here is how they reflected on that dinner'. I don't think that's a huge story. I've given you the exclusive before about my dinner plans. I'll give it again. Last night, as I've done it every night this week, I had dinner at home. We had a roast chook. It was delicious. And that's that's all I've got to say about the Otis/Wild Duck Group.
CONNELL: I'll assume you and your wife didn't talk about a Labor coup then. You mentioned as well a JobSeeker and what the RBA Governor, Phil Lowe, had to say, look, not for the first time, but that's a little bit more emphasis on saying fairness is the reason for this increase. Is Labor going to put a number on it or just wait for the Government to have some sort of increase and then come out and say the increase is not big enough?
GORMAN: Well, I hope that the Government increases it. I hope that the Government increases it by enough, but we don't need to come out and criticise a small increase. One simple thing is in 1320 hours the supplementary rate of JobSeeker ends. One simple thing the Government could do is say what they're going to do between that time, the end of March, next month and the Budget, because that's really the period which people are saying, well, if you're going to increase it in the Budget, what happens in between? We know that they were late to the party when it came to introducing JobKeeper and that resulted in unemployment and people fearing they're going to live in poverty. If the Government does something now about JobSeeker to give people a bit more certainty, and indeed here in Western Australia, we've got people who are feeling uncertain in all sorts of ways from this outbreak of the virus through to the terrible bushfires that we're seeing across the Perth Hills. It would be fabulous to see the Government provide some level of certainty for those people who are facing all of those things, plus unemployment, knowing that they're going to find it very hard to find a job over of next year. I would be very comfortable if the Government would just extend the current JobSeeker supplement for a period of time until they make a long-term plan in the Budget.
CONNELL: We will see and we will hope to see you back here with your sparring partner, Jason Falinski, of course, in person, assuming that that clears up over there. So stay safe over there in Perth. Patrick, thank you.
GORMAN: Thank you, Tom.
ENDS