Anika Wells MP on ABC Capital Hill
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TELEVISION INTERVIEW
ABC CAPITAL HILL
WEDNESDAY, 4 AUGUST 2021
SUBJECTS: Lockdowns, Doherty report, $300 vaccine payment, vaccine rollout, Morrison Government rorts
MATTHEW DORAN, HOST: Liberal MP James Stevens who’s here in Canberra and from locked-down Brisbane Labor’s Anika Wells. Welcome to both of you. Anika Wells I do want to start with you seeing as you not quite here with us as usual, bantering across the desk as we regularly do.
ANIKA WELLS, MEMBER FOR LILLEY: I miss you too Matt
DORAN: Talk us through what’s happening in Melbourne, not in Melbourne, in Brisbane at the moment. And how the lockdown is affecting your community.
WELLS: Well we’re in another short sharp lockdown we hope. It’s been extended to eight days and here on the northside it’s had immediate impact because we’ve got 6600 aviation workers who got some good news in the federal courts on Friday where they beat Qantas about outsourcing. But they got some terrible news yesterday where another 2000 workers are due to be stood down. Only 24 hours after the Deputy Prime Minister announced supposedly a support package. We’ve also got frontline health workers manning vaccination clinics and the Covid wards at The Prince Charles Hospital. So everybody’s all hands on deck. I think they wish their Prime Minister would be the same.
DORAN: Yesterday we were hearing from another Brisbane-based MP Julian Simmonds, from across the aisle from you, but no doubt still representing the interests of Brisbane there. He was saying that in some circumstances he’s hearing that people are having to wait up to seven hours in their cars to try to get coronavirus tests throughout this lockdown period. Is that something that you’re hearing.
WELLS: No we aren’t getting those reports here on the Northside. We’ve got, I think six off the top of my head, clinics for testing now including one which is just for heavy vehicles. So we’ve got a heavy industrial area here in Lilley and a proud local manufacturing history. The reports that I’m getting or the questions I get that people are calling us about here in the office are things like support for childcare where Queensland’s not experiencing the same kind of support that New South Wales is from the Federal Government. And also just trying to understand how these restrictions impact their work. I guess the fact is that people feel pretty frustrated about these lockdowns but they are going to keep happening until we get the vaccine rollout that we were promised and that we deserve.
DORAN: James Stevens I’ll bring you into the discussion now. It’s not that long since your city of Adelaide was experiencing one of these short, sharp lockdowns that went for about a week or so. Hearing there from Anika Wells about frustration in the community. Do you think that there is a sense of frustration in your community in South Australia about these lockdowns still having to be put in place?
JAMES STEVENS, MEMBER FOR STURT: Well Matthew firstly all the best to Anika and all the people in South-East Queensland and those around the country who are in lockdown. I know how tough it is because you’re right, of course, in Adelaide we had our short, sharp lockdown that lasted for a week. And thankfully, thanks to the strong, early decision by Premier Steven Marshall we were able to get on top of that outbreak very quickly and have been able to relax out of lockdown into a more normal way of life, with some work to be done. I think people are focussed on the announcement we made yesterday which is what the pathway is through vaccination to getting back to a new normal. It was good to see the outline of the Doherty report yesterday which shows what the thresholds are and why they are at those levels – the 70 percent, 80 percent vaccination rates that will allow us to move beyond these kinds of lockdowns. Yes it’s tough. Lockdowns are tough. This Delta virus has really changed the game. It is the most virulent strain of coronavirus but clearly it just goes to reinforce how important it is for all of us to participate in the vaccination program. Get vaccinated so we can get beyond lockdowns and back to a new way of normal living.
DORAN: Well you pointed to that Doherty modelling. So let’s discuss that. How likely James Stevens do you think it is that we are going to get to that 70 percent benchmark? Which is the first, I guess, target that has been outline by the Institute and adopted by the States and Territories.
STEVENS: Well that’s our challenge together as Australians and I’m very confident that we’ll meet it. Not just 70 but 80 and hopefully well beyond that. Clearly we’ve already seen more than 12 and a half million Australians be vaccinated. We’ve now vaccinated, given more than a million shots in the last six days. So as every day goes we’re vaccinating more people. More Australians are coming forward for their first or second dose. We’ve got more age groups hopefully opening up in September and October. Doses of Pfizer and others coming into the country. The supply is coming online. We need the participation of the community but I’ve got a great confidence in Australians that we’re all going to pull together, participate in this vaccination program and get to those targets that were outlined yesterday.
DORAN: Anika Wells your party leader believes that there needs to be incentives on the table to convince Australians to line up and get their shot. A $300 financial incentive no less. This is something the Prime Minister gave pretty short thrift to yesterday. Why should we be financially incentivising people to get the shot?
WELLS: Well firstly it was pretty ridiculous of the Prime Minister to give it short shrift yesterday when it’s in his own Covid recovery plan, phase B I think, that incentives are part of the process to get us out and get the community recovered. But basically $300 for a jab helps get us over that 70 per cent minimum the Doherty report requires but also when you think about the timing of it, it means that approaching Christmas, Australians will have an extra $300 in their pocket. And that helps stimulate the local economy and all the local businesses that are suffering under lockdowns now. I mean I think it was so silly of the government to try and claim that 300 bucks for an ordinary Australian is a waste of money when $300 million is being spent each day that we’re in a lockdown. And this is the same Morrison government that sprays $600 million around for carpark rorts and $100 million around for sports rorts. It’s the same Morrison government that squibbed the vaccine rollout in the first place when they were penny pinching about giving a billion dollars to Pfizer. That we’re now trying to say that giving ordinary Australians 300 bucks is a waste of money. Honestly it’s like the arsonist complaining about the price of water
DORAN: {laughs} An interesting turn of phrase there from you Anika Wells. We will get to the carpark situation in a second but I want to put to you James Stevens. Talking to a few infectious disease specialists, I noticed Sanjaya Sananayake from the ANU was around on the weekend suggesting that we could get to a situation such as what the United States has experienced where vaccination rates sort of plateau and getting those reluctant or hesitant Americans to get their shot has been quite an undertaking by health authorities there. Do you think that at some stage we are going to have to look at some incentives to get the shot or are you dismissing it entirely?
STEVENS: Well I’ve got a lot more confidence in the people of Australia than the Labor Party do. That they want to participate happily and voluntarily in the program of getting vaccinated to protect ourselves and to protect our friends and loved ones. I don’t see the signs that this is necessary whatsoever. I see people happily going up, rolling up their sleeve to get the jab in their arm. They are doing it for their own protection and for the protection of their families and loved ones. I’m looking forward to getting mine when I’m eligible very soon. Hopefully in September. And there’s no sign that this is necessary. I think it’s insulting to Australians to say to them hey we don’t think you’re going to be good citizens of this country and go out and get vaccinated. So we want to pay you, bribe you to do it. I don’t think there’s any sign that’s necessary whatsoever. It goes to show what the Labor party think of Australians.
DORAN: There’s been a lot of discussion about the State of Origin nature of how this coronavirus pandemic has been handled. The States and Territories sometimes engaging in some shall we say, spirited debate amongst themselves as to the best way to manage outbreaks, the best ways to manage borders. Now that the states and territories have signed up to these new benchmarks Anika Wells do you think that they’re actually going to abide by it or will we get to a stage where again there is a splintering, a walking away from these Doherty Institute model benchmarks and it’s going to be a ‘fend for yourself’ situation again.
WELLS: I think that the only reason there has been a splintering or a fending for themselves, if you want to call it that, is where there has been an absence of leadership at the national level. An absence of leadership from our Prime Minister. Where Premiers have had to step up and lead their states in that absence. But I know the majority of Australians have done the right thing, want to do the right thing and want to be out of this pandemic as quickly as possible. But I also know because I do one or two mobile offices a week that there is a lot of vaccine hesitancy out there. So we’ve got to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. We’ve got to lead, we’ve got to provide the best practice so people who want to do the right thing by themselves, their families and the community. And we’ve got to work out how to incentivise everybody else so we can all get out of this pandemic as quickly as possible.
DORAN: James Stevens do you think it’s going to be a more united front from here on?
STEVENS: Well I hope so. It needs to be and it should be. We need all the State Premiers and Territory leaders to be working with the federal government. We are all in this together. And the national cabinet process that the Prime Minister established at the start of the pandemic was for exactly this reason. We’ve got the best experts in the country in their field providing advice into that process. We saw some of the examples of that expert advice released yesterday by the Doherty Institute. We need to set and stick to these targets that have been outlined and we need to give everyone in the country a confidence that all their governments are working together to get us through and beyond the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic.
DORAN: We are quickly running out of time but I do want to pick up on this issue of the carpark fund. We heard that defence from Alan Tudge on a little earlier in the program. James Stevens if it walks like a duck, and sounds like a duck why is the coalition suggesting it’s not a duck? Or indeed any sort of pork barelling to mix animal-based metaphors here on national television.
STEVENS: Well you’re talking about the Urban Congestion Fund which I know very well. I had three projects in my own electorate, not carparks, intersections. They are very meritorious projects that will make an enormous difference to people in my electorate in Sturt. I think that fund is going to deliver excellent outcomes across the country. You played before our segment, of course, the interview with the Minister. I completely concur with the way in which he explained the way in which we approached that. We took those commitments to the election and people re-elected the Coalition government. And we proceeded to honour those commitments. I am proud of what we are doing in my electorate and across the country when it comes to unclogging our cities and investing in congestion busting.
DORAN: So is the audit office wrong?
STEVENS: I don’t think it’s a question of right or wrong. And as I say, we made those commitments, we took them to the election and now we’re honouring the commitments that people voted for.
DORAN: Anika Wells, you’re in a highly marginal seat, might even be the most marginal certainly in Queensland, if not further afield. Did you see any cash from this fund?
WELLS: No, the Morrison Government didn’t come within co-ee of Lilley last election because they didn’t think they could win the seat. So we have no money promised by the Morrison Government. And I suspect they’ll be a little interested in how things are on the northside of Brisbane this time around now it is such a marginal seat. I did six months of community surveys. I put to the treasurer personally in his foyer, Lilley’s budget submission, asking for a number of different infrastructure projects that had been neglected by the Morrison Government on the northside. None of them were funded in the Federal Budget. And I think the ANAO has revealed why. It’s all been done by spreadsheets and by people in the Prime Minister’s office themselves. I really hope they clean themselves up. They cannot let themselves off the hook just by saying because weren’t aware of the extent of their whiteboard regime, that somehow because they’ve been re-elected they’re allowed to keep doing this. That does not pass the pub test.
DORAN: Just briefly before we run out of time Anika Wells. The argument that Labor is putting forward here is that this is a misuse of public funds. But are you going to struggle to sell that message in the electorates that benefited when they are potentially having 10-15 minutes cut off their commute time. And actually are quite happy to see that money thrown at their local projects.
WELLS: Well if that’s the case, I mean this Morrison Government also has a complete failure to deliver projects. I’ve seen since a couple of these projects have been abandoned altogether. There was a project in the Treasurer’s electorate that was given to a railway station that’s due to be closed down. So the carpark’s for a place that doesn’t exist anymore. If there was any risk that these things were actually going to roll out, perhaps we could be more concerned. But they seem to manage to pork barrel and be incompetent at delivery at the same time. It’s a unique combination and one I hope we get rid of at the next election.
DORAN: Anika Wells and James Stevens, it’s certainly an issue we’re going to be hearing much more about in the lead up to an election, whenever that may be. For your time today, thanks for joining us on Capital Hill.
STEVENS: Thanks Matthew
WELLS: Pleasure Matt, and James.
ENDS
