TRANSCRIPT: ABC RADIO NATIONAL INTERVIEW, 19 October 2020

7:36AM

E&OE

Subjects: Coronavirus, Trans-Tasman Travel Bubble, Repatriation Flights, Virgin Australia;

GERALDINE DOOGUE

Michael McCormack is the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Transport and he joins us from Parliament House. Good morning, Minister.

MICHAEL McCORMACK

Good morning, Geraldine.

GERALDINE DOOGUE

These slow and steady steps that Victoria's taking to reopen from the lockdown, Premier Dan Andrews says the November 2 re-open date for many businesses may be brought forward by a week if the numbers are low. You're convinced, are you, they should come down earlier? Like you're confident, from what you know about the health and so on, that is safe?

MICHAEL McCORMACK

All the way through, Geraldine, we've taken the best possible advice from the Chief Health Officer in the country. Professor Paul Kelly and Professor Brendan Murphy have been absolutely magnificent through this. They've kept Australians safe and the 14-day rolling average of fewer than 10, well Victoria's now meeting that, 7.5. It's time to re-open Victoria.

Look at the job numbers just for September, 170,000 jobs created in everywhere other than Victoria, 70,000 job losses in Victoria. These figures are stark, they're real and we need to get Australians back to work, whether they're from Melbourne, whether they're from Manangatang, wherever the case might be. It's very much a lockdown in Melbourne which has got to be looked at, reviewed and made sure that it eases very, very soon because it can't continue the way it is.

GERALDINE DOOGUE

I wonder how you feel about this ring of steel notion, stopping Melbournians from travelling outside the city because regional Victoria clearly, the effort is to keep regional Victoria virus free, which you represent regional people –

MICHAEL McCORMACK

Well it's been relatively virus free the whole way through.

GERALDINE DOOGUE

But there's a sense they want to make absolutely sure. This risk-free behaviour obviously, for instance, rewarded Jacinda Ardern in New Zealand. That was what was very interesting to see despite the economy.

MICHAEL McCORMACK

It's not about rewarding somebody at the polls, it's about doing the right thing. You cannot smash your economy. You can't just make businesses redundant because you're trying an eradication policy. I mean we are in the midst of a global pandemic. Australia has done very, very well and we need to get Victorians back to work. We've put the parameters in place, $314 billion of assistance leading up to the budget, in place to get Australia working, to make Australia healthy and we've done very, very well compared to anywhere else in the world. What's happened in Victoria, what's happened primarily in Melbourne has been a very sad state of affairs. It's time to get back to work.

GERALDINE DOOGUE

So one or two weeks more, you think that is just too much of a penalty to pay?

MICHAEL McCORMACK

Well the original road map he had was around October 23. It just keeps getting pushed out. It can't keep getting pushed out. We need to get this frustration eased. You know, even for AFL Grand Final weekend when many Melbournians are rightly celebrating their two Victorian teams, Geelong and Richmond, playing off in the Grand Final in Brisbane. Who would have thought? I appreciate Daniel Andrews saying, you know, "Is it worth it, a barbecue, having yet a third outbreak?" But seriously, Victorians have been very hard hit and it's time to look at those case numbers, to look at the mortality rates and to say, "Well, if it's good enough for the Chief Health Officer in the country to say that we're meeting what he expects, then it's good enough for Melbourne".

GERALDINE DOOGUE

That obviously goes to the travel bubble story as well. Inbound travellers are allowed to visit New South Wales and the Territory without having to quarantine. 55 passengers immediately caught connecting flights to Melbourne having come from New Zealand, another 23 to Perth, even though Victoria and WA are not part of the arrangement. Both states say they were given no advance warning. Should they have been?

MICHAEL McCORMACK

The important thing to note here is that they're coming from areas where there have been no community transmissions in 14 days. They're healthy people. So for many of them they're coming back to Australia to meet loved ones, to meet family members. Heaven forbid some of them might even be coming to contribute to the West Australian economy by working. Now, the states have had access to the airline's manifest, their passenger manifest, since October 16. This has been discussed ad nauseam at National Cabinet. So, to say that they had no idea, I think is a step too far.

GERALDINE DOOGUE

They did know that this was likely to happen, did they?

MICHAEL McCORMACK

Well, when it's being discussed around the National Cabinet table, when it's being discussed in the media, when they have access to the travel logs of the airlines which have been made available to their Health Ministers, to their Chief Medical Officers, you know, they need to perhaps do a little bit of internal talking and make sure that they're aware of who's coming. At the end of the day yes, I appreciate that the jurisdictions are responsible for who comes into their state, but they've had every opportunity to avail themselves of that information.

GERALDINE DOOGUE

I mean you're the Transport Minister. I notice that the Western Australian Premier Mark McGowan, he says he wants better management from the Federal Government, in particular "proper manifest and proper advice so we can manage these people". Might you tell Border Force and the airlines to provide faster access to passenger lists so the states can be better prepared?

MICHAEL McCORMACK

Well that access is their Geraldine, It's there now. So, states need to perhaps look at those things and communicate amongst each other and I know these media conferences are important every day to get the word out to the general public but those internal discussions are as well, between Premiers, between Ministers. We've seen in Victoria former Health Minister Jenny Mikakos and the Premier Dan Andrews, those lines of communication were not always there. Perhaps they need to be.

GERALDINE DOOGUE

To go to the repatriation flights now and very welcome news, the first of the repatriation flights scheduled for this week, all up an extra 5,000 Australians stranded overseas will be brought home between now and March. Many have been marooned for several months. Why would you say it's taken the Government so long to organise these flights, because we know Qantas planes have been idle for months, the Howard Springs quarantine facility outside Darwin's always been there? What's exactly been the hold up?

MICHAEL McCORMACK

We've been bringing Australians back, 29,000 have returned since March and they've been through either private or Government assisted repatriation flights. There have been any number of those flights from LA, from London. These new flights are also going to come from New Delhi and indeed Johannesburg. So there's a considerable number of flights that have been there.

We did ask and the Prime Minister did say to Australians, he urged and encouraged them back in February-March to come home. Many Australians chose not to when there were far more flights available. And of course what we're doing now is we're making sure that through the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, for those vulnerable Australians, we're placing priority on them to come home first.

Of course, yes, we have reopened Howard Springs. Of course, we had a Northern Territory election. There were issues there at Howard Springs which have, you know, certainly been looked at. I know when the first lot of repatriation and quarantine people were in Howard Springs there were a lot of complaints aired through the media. Those matters have been addressed. Of course there was a Northern Territory election and so obviously the Government was in caretaker mode. These things are important, but it's also the various quarantine caps in the states that were a limitation. States set quarantine caps. The Federal Government asked the states to raise them. Of course, then there was a hullabaloo from states, Western Australia in particular, who said they didn't know and weren't aware that the caps were being raised. Well hello, this was discussed at National Cabinet. Again, it was a bit like the New Zealand Trans‑Tasman bubble situation. These matters are being discussed at National Cabinet. The process should be working well and Premiers need to talk to Health Ministers a little bit closer.

GERALDINE DOOGUE

Are you really saying Premiers need to talk to their citizens a bit differently?

MICHAEL McCORMACK

Well if that's needed then so be it.

GERALDINE DOOGUE

I mean in other words you're saying that there is information circulating around, I mean I think listeners would like to know, I mean it certainly doesn't sound like that when the press conferences are taking –

MICHAEL McCORMACK

Absolutely and business needs to have a big say too on the fact that, we just need to get Australians back into work. If you listen to Peter Strong from COSBOA, Chamber of Commerce’s James Pearson, those sorts of people will say that business needs to get back operating, doors need to be reopened, staff need to be rehired. At the moment the Federal Government can't do most of the heavy lifting. We've put on the table $314 billion leading up to the budget. Western Australia announced a budget surplus. Now if you ask most Australians, yes, governments should be producing budget surpluses but in time of crisis it's a bit rich to then put all the onus on the Federal Government for the assistance, all the onus on the Federal Government to do absolutely all the heavy lifting when it comes to repatriating Australians. At the end of the day too there are many, many Western Australians who just want to come home, and certainly for Christmas. This is going to be a vital stepping stone in making sure that we get Australia back to some sort of normality.

GERALDINE DOOGUE

Now look, I think it's the last thing we're going to have time to talk to you about, on Virgin. The new owners Bain Capital want to turn Virgin into a hybrid carrier which sounds like a cut price, no frills budget airline which would leave Qantas as the only full-service airline. One could say doesn't the Australian travelling public deserve better than this? Don't we need at least two full-service carriers to ensure there's proper market competition? Isn't that what we've learned over the last generation?

MICHAEL McCORMACK

Well, eight months ago, people were saying there was only going to be one carrier full stop. At least through the assistance that we've provided, $1.31 billion, sector wide assistance to the aviation industry, we've got two viable competitive airlines. Now there's another creditors meeting this week for Virgin. Of course November 4 is the date of finalisation of the sale. I'm pleased that Bain has come in and said that they want to make sure that Virgin remains a viable carrier. Of course, saddled with debt prior to COVID there was always going to be the necessity for Virgin to refinance and restructure. They've done that. They're flying. What we need to do is get these border restrictions eased so that we can get planes back in the air because planes in the air means jobs on the ground. That's the critical thing.

GERALDINE DOOGUE

The other thing on your block is the land sale scandal in Western Sydney, that officials from your Infrastructure Department will be up before Senate Estimates today about this issue, asked to explain why the Department paid more than $30 million to people who'd been Liberal Party donors for a parcel of land that was later valued at less $3 million. Are you still of the view, Mr McCormack, that taxpayers got a bargain?

MICHAEL McCORMACK

What I said was in time it would be viewed that when there are new runways and new infrastructure being required to be built at Western Sydney Airport beyond 2050, or whenever the case might be, that the price paid now, well at least they won't be having to buy it and pay probably considerably more than $30 million for it then in decades' time. The ANAO has obviously identified this as the –

GERALDINE DOOGUE

The National Audit Office.

MICHAEL McCORMACK

Yes and obviously there's an independent review going on into that. As you say, this matter is also going to come before Senate Estimates and as well as the ANAO, the audit office and the Secretary of the Department have referred it to the AFP. So all those matters will be fully investigated, we’ll find out why it was bought very much over the odds and certainly the Government will concur with whatever those findings realise.

GERALDINE DOOGUE

Have you got any idea when that will happen, when we'll find out about those –

MICHAEL McCORMACK

In coming weeks, I'm sure.

GERALDINE DOOGUE

All right, thank you very much for joining us.

MICHAEL McCORMACK

Thanks Geraldine, all the best.

ENDS 7:49AM

Shane Manning