Interview with Allison Langdon, Today Show

ALLISON LANGDON: A show of unity yesterday, the Prime Minister standing shoulder to shoulder with New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian, announcing a multibillion dollar rescue package to help Sydney survive an extended lockdown. But then hours later, a Victorian government spokesman issued an astonishing statement accusing the Prime Minister of double standards for making Victoria beg for, and I quote, 'every scrap of support.' The Prime Minister joins me now. Prime Minister, good morning.

PRIME MINISTER: Good morning, Ally.

LANGDON: Well, let's talk about that statement first, because it was incredibly strong language. Was it a fair point?

PRIME MINISTER: No, it wasn't. At the, during the Victorian lockdown, the Commonwealth Government, without request, was providing three quarters of a billion dollars a week, every week for months on end into Victoria and in the most recent lockdown they had, which just thankfully only went for two weeks, for Victoria, they got exactly what New South Wales got for those two weeks. So New South Wales is now going into week four of a lockdown, and that means the challenges are escalating. And what I announced yesterday is exactly what every other state and territory would get in week four of a lockdown. Let's hope there is no week four of lockdowns in the other states and territories. But I think people, frankly, want to see just governments working together. The Victorian Government has been strongly supported by the Commonwealth, particularly last year during those terrible lockdowns. And I have no doubt that people in Melbourne and across Victoria just want to ensure that Sydney can get through this and that they don't have to look at a lockdown that was so devastating that we saw in Victoria. But as I said, last year, we were putting three quarters of a billion dollars every single week into Victoria while they went through that lockdown. And on top of that was the further support for mental health support, very similar to what we announced yesterday for the mental health support here in Sydney. We've just got to fix the problem. And when Victoria needed the Commonwealth, we were there and when New South Wales needed the Commonwealth, we're here again and we'll continue to be there, particularly those payments where it starts this Friday. You can already get a $500 and $325 payment, now. There's been 130,000 claims that are already getting those payments from this Friday for those first four LGAs. $600, if you'd lost more than 20 hours a week. $375, if between eight and 20 hours a week. And for the rest of New South Wales and Greater Sydney, that's available from Monday on a recurring basis for as long as the lockdown goes.

LANGDON: Let's just talk about that rescue package, because when it was announced yesterday, it sounded pretty good to me. But I spoke to a couple of small and medium sized businesses last night to get their take on it. And to be honest, I was surprised by their responses. One described it as tokenistic and another said it was too little, too late, while another says we're sinking and the five grand available to us, will pay the accountants and lawyers to wind up business. Have you underestimated just how dire the situation is?

PRIME MINISTER: No, I don't believe so. What we've done is actually more than what we did a year ago with the cash flow boost, which is what this particular payment is based on. That's the payment we're doing together with the New South Wales Government. But don't forget that on top of that, there's a further support package that the New South Wales Government is putting in to the tune of a further $3 billion. And, and so we welcome that support from New South Wales Government as well. We've welcomed the support from the Chambers and the Business Council and the Federation of Australian Industry and the other groups that have been very supportive of this package. It's targeted to the support. It provides that cash flow boost, a thousand dollars for sole traders. $1,500 minimum for businesses with a turnover as low as $75,000 a year. And then that goes up to $10,000 payments and 40 per cent of your payroll.

LANGDON: We actually had Innes Willox on the show a little earlier and he said that this package is not enough to save some businesses from going under. Why was bringing back JobKeeper such an issue? Had you backed yourself into a corner there? Because that's what most businesses are saying. You had a programme that worked brilliantly. Why aren't we seeing it now?

PRIME MINISTER: Because this isn't a national programme. This is a targeted programme for New South Wales and in particular for the greater Sydney area. And we are providing exactly the same payments to individuals that were being provided under JobKeeper. It's $600 dollars a week. That's what JobKeeper was paying in the fourth quarter of last year. That's what …

LANGDON: We wouldn't be in this situation if our vaccine rollout was on track.

PRIME MINISTER: No, that's not true because there's only one or two countries in the world that are above 65 per cent on their vaccination rates, which is the United Kingdom, which should clock over that mark in the next week or so, and Israel. The rest of the world is not at those rates of vaccination and Australia was not going to be at those sort of rates of vaccination at this time of the year. So that's just simply not true.

LANGDON: Few countries would be talking about single digits when we're talking percentages and we're at nine percent.

PRIME MINISTER: No, no, we're above 10 per cent. So that's just not true. A third ...

LANGDON: Where exactly are we right now?

PRIME MINISTER: We're at about 11 per cent. We've got over 30 per cent, a third of Australians have already received their first dose. Well over 70 per cent of over 70s and well over half of those over 50. And we're scaling up now to almost a million doses a week. And at this rate, we will get this job done by the end of the year …

LANGDON: Are you happy with 11 per cent right now?

PRIME MINISTER: Of course, we want it to be higher. That's why we want people to go and get vaccinated. But we're about two months behind where we'd hope to be and where we'd plan to be as a result of the ATAGI advice on AstraZeneca and, of course, the early issues we had with accessing those AstraZeneca supplies before our manufactured product was available. So we're in no way disputing the fact that we had those challenges in the first half of this year. But we've made up that ground. Lieutenant General Frewen has got us to the point now where we're getting a million doses of Pfizer from the 19th, is our advice, and that will continue to scale up. And so we were always going to be in the suppression phase at this time of the year, Ally. And most of Europe, all of Europe is still at around 50 or sub-50 per cent vaccination rates. You know, last week in the UK, more than 200 people died. 200 people died of COVID in the UK last week, and they're running at over 30,000 cases a day. Do you think if that was happening in Australia today, you'd be saying that was a success?

LANGDON: It's look, it's an entirely different situation here. And you've got businesses on their knees saying they're not going to survive this lockdown and people with elderly relatives who can't get vaccinated. It's a very different situation. You've just got to look at, I don't know if you've seen the pictures this morning of the queues of people waiting for a test in Fairfield in Sydney's south, just showing them to you now live, I mean, this is disgraceful. You've got people being told to get tested. People are doing the right thing during this lockdown. We've seen it during lockdowns previously, too. These are people here who have come off a 12 hour shifts, they're then waiting six hours for a test. You've got people doing the right thing. How is this good enough, the situation we're seeing in Fairfield this morning?

PRIME MINISTER: Well, I'm sure the New South Wales Government, that is running the testing regimes there, will get on top of that. Of course, there's a big demand and I'd correct you on one thing. Australians over 70 have been able to get the AstraZeneca vaccine since the start. All residential aged care facilities have had two-dose visits for the vaccine. So it's not true to say that older Australians haven't had access to that vaccine. They have had access to that vaccine for many, many months. And we've been encouraging Australians to go and get that vaccine, as you know, particularly those who are aged over 70. Our vaccine rollout is running actually ahead of where the New Zealand rollout is on first doses and on two doses, it's running at about the same. They've only got Pfizer. We've got Pfizer as well as AstraZeneca. And that's what will see our vaccination rates increase. I don't dismiss the fact that we've had challenges, Ally. We have had challenges. The changes in the medical advice on AstraZeneca, dealt the programme a heavy blow. But equally, we have the most, I think, the safest pharmaceutical regulators in the world. And that caution has also saved a lot of lives, particularly when we're looking at last year. So Australia is making our way.

LANGDON: I think that changing advice has really confused people when it changed yesterday, saying you can now get it under 60 AstraZeneca if you live in a hotspot, if you don't have access to Pfizer. I think people are wondering, what's it going to be, what's it going to be next week? And the question most people want to know, is it safe or isn't it safe?

PRIME MINISTER: Well, the TGA has already said it's safe. I mean, it's approved for people over the age of 18. And I understand that that can be confusing when the medical experts, which, as you know, are independent from the government, what they've said is, is when the case numbers are extremely low, which is what they have been largely in Australia, then they they say on the balance of risk, they make that assessment. But when the risk of getting COVID increases, which is what we're seeing in particularly south west Sydney and more broadly, they're saying the risk favours being able to use that vaccine. Which is why in the UK they pressed ahead with AstraZeneca because people were dying every day, every single day. And that's still happening in the United Kingdom. And we don't want to see that happening here in Australia. And that's why it's important that those people, particularly older Australians who have had access to the vaccine for a long time now, we encourage them to go and get that vaccine.

LANGDON: OK, well, Anthony Albanese has labelled you incompetent and has said that the vaccine failures have endangered lives. Your response to that?

PRIME MINISTER: Well, if negativity was the answer, then Labor would be the solution. But that's not the solution. The solution is working together and getting this done, not undermining and seeking to score political points.

LANGDON: Do you think the New South Wales lockdown, what Sydney is seeing at the moment, do you think it goes hard enough? We had the CEO of the Burnett Institute on earlier say that it's too soft. Your thoughts?

PRIME MINISTER: Well, there are a lot of, there are a lot of people expressing opinions about these things, but there are only a very small number of people who have the responsibility of making decisions.

LANGDON: Would you have gone harder?

PRIME MINISTER: Well, New South Wales went into lockdown, I think, on day 11 of this outbreak. In Victoria, on the second wave, they went into lockdown, I think, on day 45. And so a lot has been learnt from that. And the New South Wales Government, as always, has been making decisions based on the best possible medical advice. Now, that lockdown now, I think has particularly had some strong effect over the last four or five days. What was more concerning was the lack of compliance in those early parts of the lockdown. I think that's been well addressed by the community and by the government now. And what we announced yesterday, which I stress again, of those payments between $1,500 to $10,000 a week. Now, that is more than what we were doing a year ago with the cash flow boost, which this payment is modelled on. And that was very effective when combined together with the direct payments now, which we've always done with JobKeeper, now has been done direct. It would take longer to get those payments directly to people if we weren't doing it the way we're doing it now. We can move more quickly to get those payments direct from the government to people when they ring that number 180 22 66 or go to the Services Australia website. And for the business support, you go to Service New South Wales for those business payments. Registrations open on that today. The New South Wales Government tells us that they'll be able to receive applications and process payments this month. And in the meantime, the banks have said to us Ally, this is very important, those businesses can go to their bank knowing that there will be support payments coming to those businesses, and the Australian Bankers Association have told us that the banks will be supporting small business to cash flow that for them in the meantime. So that's exactly how JobKeeper worked the first time around. It's a partnership between employers, the banks and the Government.

LANGDON: All right. I'll tell you what, it's all a bit grim in Sydney at the moment. But one thing we can hold on to, is there'll be a Blues whitewash tonight, won't it?

PRIME MINISTER: Well, I'll be watching like everyone else. And hopefully that will bring some cheer to people in New South Wales. And hopefully they'll have a strong result. And I'll certainly be cheering it on, as I always am.

LANGDON: Yeah, they need to win, don't they? Prime Minister, thanks for your time this morning. We always appreciate it.

PRIME MINISTER: Thanks, Ally. Good to be with you.

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