TRANSCRIPT: INTERVIEW ON SUNRISE WITH NATALIE BARR, 18 March 2020
E&OE
Subjects: Aviation Relief Package, Coronavirus;
NATALIE BARR
Live now to the Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack at Wagga Wagga Airport. Morning to you, will this be enough to keep Australian airlines flying?
MICHAEL MCCORMACK
Good morning Nat. Well we’ll continue to work with the airline companies. I’ve been speaking to the executives every day. In fact, every hour just about and we will continue to talk to them but the $715 million is a good start and we want to make sure that our aviation industry gets through this and of course. It’s a $45 billion industry to Australia, that’s what it means to Australians. We all know how important and I’m in Wagga Wagga and certainly we know in regional Australia just how important a strong aviation sector is.
NATALIE BARR
We’ve got Foreign Affairs urging all Aussies to get at home as soon as possible. Then we’ve got people overseas we’ve heard this morning waiting on the phone for six, seven hours to try and get flights home. It’s pretty difficult isn’t it. What advice would you give?
MICHAEL MCCORMACK
Well come home, come home soon. Get home safely. That’s the advice that the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is sending out. Our health system is much better here and we want Australians to come home. We want Australians home because of our health system, as I say, is far better here and they’re far better off being home and that’s the advice that DFAT are putting out and I would urge and encourage and implore Australians to follow that advice.
NATALIE BARR
We’re now hearing the unemployment rate is going to skyrocket one in ten Australians could be out of a job over this, up to a million people out of work. Can you give us some details on what your government is doing with this second package?
MICHAEL MCCORMACK
Well the Prime Minister will be standing up again very, very soon later today to a make more announcements. We were in lock-up yesterday making sure as an Expenditure Review Committee that we got the right measures in place, that we put the right measures together the right package to address this issue.
Yes there are going to be a lot of businesses which are going to do it very, very tough the coming months potentially until Spring. We need those businesses to have cash flow we need to make sure they keep people employed as best as they can and that’s why we announced our stimulus package last week and of course this is an unfolding situation and that’s why we met yesterday behind closed doors for many, many hours to discuss what we could do to help Australians through this.
But we need Australians to stay calm and we need them to stay very measured particularly in things like raiding supermarket shelves. It’s just not on. It’s crazy. We need Australians to, as best they can, ensure that they stay well that they stay safe that’s why we’re urging them to come home. That’s why we’re urging them to remain calm. When it goes to buying such things as toilet rolls, pasta and all those sorts of things you know we need Australians to think of each other, this is one of the worst crises since World War II, but we will get through it Nat, we always do. We’re very resilient Australians.
NATALIE BARR
I know we keep being told that we do need those shelves stocked, don’t we? A lot of people keep saying they keep going into empty shelves. Look we’re just hearing right now that overseas ANZAC services are going to be cancelled. That’s obviously Gallipoli - have you heard that?
MICHAEL MCCORMACK
Yes, I have heard that and so Australians won’t be taking part. We normally have Catafalque Parties and the like in Belgium and France and Gallipoli and of course New Zealand, Papua New Guinea as well. That won’t be going ahead this year and that’s a sensible decision. And I know the RSL across the country has also cancelled services. There will be a national televised service with very limited participants at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra this year and people will just have to stay home, stay indoors. Make sure they remember the service and sacrifice that so many have given so that we can be free and so that we can have the democracy that we do have and as our ANZACs showed they thought of one another they thought of others. I think we should show the same spirit in 2020 as we get through this coronavirus.
NATALIE BARR
Absolutely so that was speculated yesterday now confirmed.
Deputy Prime Minister thanks for your time this morning.
MICHAEL MCCORMACK
Thanks Nat.