Transcript - Sky News with Tom Connell - Thursday, 3 June 2021

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TELEVISION INTERVIEW
SKY NEWS NEWSDAY WITH TOM CONNELL
THURSDAY, 3 JUNE 2021 

SUBJECTS: JobKeeper, vaccine rollout, hotel quarantine

TOM CONNELL, HOST: That reaction through the day. Let's get some reaction to what's happening in Victoria. Joining me live in the studio, Liberal MP Jason Falinski, from the Labor Party. Patrick Gorman back together at last.

JASON FALINSKI, LIBERAL MP: It's been too long.

CONNELL:  It has. He's got an advantage on the today. He's been reading all of hisofficially required and provided notes.

PATRICK GORMAN, SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR WESTERN AUSTRALIA: So Jason's on message, for once.

CONNELL: Right on message, which is a scary thing.

FALINSKI: Who's been briefing you out of the Prime Minister's office?

CONNELL: Assistance coming for Victoria. This was interesting because we were hearing it is a principle, don't provide federal government assistance because then it encourages these unnecessary lockdowns. Now, but about face, how come?

FALINSKI: I don't know. I mean, I've got to say, I come from a part of Sydney where we were locked down for three weeks over Christmas. There are a lot of businesses in that area that that is their peak trading period.

CONNELL: They got JobKeeper.

FALINSKI: They weren't on JobKeeper, and they couldn't get JobKeeper because the lockdown was so short, but a lot of them were significantly out of pocket. Well, we're talking 800, 900 thousand dollars.

CONNELL: So do you agree with this decision?

FALINSKI: I've got to say, I mean, it's hard to say no to people, but I I'm really disappointed, as businesses in my area were not, particularly in the restaurant, the catering, the accommodation area, were not given any assistance over Christmas, which was their peak period. Where we have a Victorian government, and I mean, we we were dealing with 200 plus people in that in that outbreak.

FALINSKI: We're dealing with what at the moment, 60, 70 people, it seems. I mean, there'll be a lot of people in my area wondering what's going on.

CONNELL: So it's not fair?

FALINSKI: I think they will be saying it's not fair. It's not fair.

CONNELL: Maybe he's not on message today. Patrick, is it important to not make it too easy to lockdown? This really needs to be a last resort, doesn't it?

GORMAN: Well, the best way to avoid a lockdown is to avoid getting into the community. That means getting quarantine right. It's really clear that the hotel quarantine system isn't working as efficiently as we need it to be, we need some form of change in that system. And when it comes to the economic support, I mean, my electorate of Perth has experienced two lockdowns this year, one when JobKeeper existed, which is the same situation as Jason's community, and one just after the end of JobKeeper. So we do need to keep in mind that we are saying this.

GORMAN: We need to keep the economic response evolving, as we see different circumstances. Perth second lockdown was for three days, it was short. We were fortunate not to need the sort of financial handouts that Jason's asking for for his electorate, four months on.

CONNELL: I think he was asking at the time to be fair, as well.

FALINSKI: Yes.

GORMAN:  I think Jason's colleagues should listen to him more. I'll say that, I'll say that again and again. And if there are businesses that have been adversely impacted and JobKeeperdidn't help them when it was operating, that's something we should have looked at in the design phase of JobKeeper, where there were obviously gaps of organizing.

CONNELL: Or something, so you think something permanent going forward that can be triggered after a certain number of days of lockdown? because a two day lockdown, well, you kind of go, well.

GORMAN: With this virus, every circumstance is different, and I think we've got to not lock ourselves into a hard position saying never again, which is where the government was at the start of this week, saying, no, we're not doing any more. I'm pleased to see some rumours and reports that they're looking to change that approach. But, yeah, we can't say that this specific economic response is always going to work, because we just don't know what the challenges are that we're going to face, especially with a leaky, broken hotel quarantine system.

CONNELL: So international borders was a push you had this week from reporting in that, of course, private, never reported party room meeting.

FALINSKI: Indeed. How this stuff gets out is beyond me.

CONNELL: What what are you hoping here to get? Well, first of all, perhaps a bit easier for people to travel internationally and home quarantine, but also what? Set some incentives for people, set some targets?

FALINSKI: Yeah, I think so. I mean, look, just to Patrick's point, I really just disagree that our hotel quarantine system isn't working. Its success rate is 99.9 something per cent. That, by any standards, I mean, that's almost Tom Connell success rates. Not quite Patrick, but we're getting close, you know.

CONNELL: The other way of looking at there have been 21,

FALINSKI: But there's point zero zero one per cent,

GORMAN: That's one in a thousand. That's one in a thousand cases.

CONNELL: 21 escapes overall.

FALINSKI: Escaped? Escaped? Citizens escaped from health officials.

CONNELL: 21 times the virus has escaped hotal quarantine, that's the other way of looking at it. that's an acceptable number?

FALINSKI: Yeah, I think so, yeah. To be honest.

GORMAN: What would be an unacceptable number, like 30 escapes? 40, 50?

FALINSKI: Well that's, that's a really,

When's the government actually going to change your approach?

FALINSKI: We are way off the talking points now. That is, that is a really interesting discussion because what Nick Coatsworth said, what Brett Sutton said, was as we increase the number of people in our community who are vaccinated, we'll obviously be looking to reopen the borders, and we are going to have to get used to, as a community, in having more positive cases in the community and dealing with it as it is a sort of flu like season where we don't shut down our entire society because you've got 30 or 40 or 50 cases

CONNELL:  Do you agree with that?

GORMAN: I guess I'm really concerned that we're having this conversation now when we don't even have a path to the end of the vaccination program.

CONNELL: Well, there's a path.

GORMAN: When you look at people under 40, we don't have a timeline of when they will receive their vaccines.

CONNELL: But it's the conversation about where we are and where we're going with the mindset.

GORMAN: What we have, what happens with young people aged 12 to 18, whether they're going to be part of a vaccination program. We know that young people have felt the worst economic impacts of this pandemic and that while the cases are small, children and young people do suffer severe consequences from this virus, they do die. We've seen hundreds of deaths in the United States from COVID in children. We don't have a plan for vaccinating teachers and vaccinating childcare workers. I think we should go really slowly about this because I really worry about intergenerational inequality.

CONNELL: So one of the most vulnerable groups to flu, though, pregnant women. Now when they die and an unborn child, that's a tragedy, but it doesn't mean we don't accept flu out there in the community. Isn't that the point? That's the conversation Jason is talking about?

GORMAN: But I'm talking about, this isn't the flu. And we're talking about what happens when you start to let COVID spread in the community when you don't have a full picture of what happens with vaccination.

CONNELL: What do you mean, not a full picture though?

GORMAN: What I'm saying is we don't know what's happening with vaccination timelines for people, and I worry about people rushing to say, let's get everything open. Let's say it's just like the flu, let's let it out there. Until we know when every Australian is offered a vaccine, until we're open about what happens with people aged 12 to 18 and indeed children, until we are clear about what happens with all of those cohorts. I think it's a bit cart before the horse to talk about opening up.

FALINSKI: Look, I mean, I think the Pat's sort of jumping from zero to 100. No one's suggesting that we open the entire,

GORMAN: zero to 99.9

FALINSKI: Indeed. Maybe even that. Well, that would be point zero zero one to one hundred. But anyway, long and short of it is that we're getting, that we, we're not talking about fully closes,now, let's open everything. We're talking about, what are the, what's the road path or the road towards fully opening? What are the steps along that? Does that encourage people to go and get vaccinated, who otherwise would kind of saying, look, it's not a high priority for me at the moment? I disagree with Patrick. I think we have a pretty well thought out plan for vaccine distribution. It's a massive logistical exercise. That means there will be problems in different nodes of that distribution. But they're being worked out as time goes on.

GORMAN: We've we're definitely seeing the problems in the distribution. I agree with Jason on that.

CONNELL: Think we've got to end it there. Great to have you back.

GORMAN: Great to be back.

FALINSKI: Get back out there and do your parliamentary thing. Jason, Patrick,

FALINSKI: Thank you.

CONNELL: Talk again next week.