TRANSCRIPT: SKY NEWS INTERVIEW WITH PETER GLEESON, 23 March 2020
E&OE
Subjects: Coronavirus;
PETER GLEESON:
Michael McCormack joins me now from our Canberra studios. Michael, I’ve seen a lot of Question Times in my lifetime but that was about as somber as it gets today.
MICHAEL MCCORMACK:
And with good reason Peter and I think both sides appreciated the fact that we have a crisis on our hands and we needed to be our best selves just as we’re asking Australians to be their best selves Peter. We want Australians to stay calm and measured, to get through this crisis as best we can and Parliament certainly had those ideals today.
PETER GLEESON:
Michael a lot of viewers at home in regional Australia are wondering how this will impact them. You’re the Leader of the National Party, you’re the Deputy Prime Minister. How will this crisis affect our regional viewers?
MICHAEL MCCORMACK:
Well it will affect all the regions, of course it will affect every single Australian as the Prime Minister has said. Life coming out the other end of this Coronavirus pandemic probably won’t be the same for most people and sadly, there will be some people who won’t be with us, who are now, who are contributors to our society now. We hope that the death toll remains at seven but, you know, it’s hard to see it actually happening like that. We’ve got more than 1600 cases in Australia. That number is going up exponentially, every single day, every single hour and for the regions, when natural disasters hit and disasters in general actually occur, often we’re the hardest hit. And you know with this, of course there are going to be health implications. We have the tyranny of distance, one thing that Australians who live in the regions know all about and that is distance and so, in one sense, social distancing will be something that we’re quite used to because we’re used to making sure that we have those distances we do have in regional Australia, large tracts of land between each town. But we’re also very good at travelling and of course as we’ve heard from Premiers, we’ve heard from the Prime Minister, we need to stay in our suburbs, we need to stay in our towns. These school holidays that are coming up are not going to be like any other school holidays. You won’t be going to the beach, you won’t be going camping. Preferably you will be staying at home. Preferably you will be staying in your own locality to make sure that we contain and minimise as best we can the spread of this deadly virus.
PETER GLEESON:
Now Michael we saw today Queensland announcing that it will be closing its borders. That comes off the back of WA, the Northern Territory, Tasmania going into lockdown. How does that affect agriculture, how does that affect our export industries?
MICHAEL MCCORMACK:
Well as you know we export so much of our food, we export so many of the goods that we make. But we are indeed, very good at food security, we are very good at self-sustainment in that regard. I told Parliament today there’s no food crisis. We do grow enough food to enable our supermarket shelves to be full, for our stomachs to be full. We just need to exercise calm and caution and think of others in that regard. So we make enough food, we grow enough food for 75 million people, both foreigners and locals, that’s three times our population. There’s enough food to go around, Peter. But the one thing I do want to stress here is I’ve just got off the phone from a teleconference hook-up with our Transport and Infrastructure Ministers right around the nation. And yes, Queensland is going into lockdown as far as their borders are concerned. I spoke to Mark Bailey at length, just as I spoke to all the other Ministers on the hook-up. What we need is consistency across our borders and when Premiers and Police Ministers stand up to make those announcements I do stress to them to make sure that there are exemptions for those truck drivers, to make exemptions to those people freighting food across the borders, and as you said at the top of your show for those people in the Tweed who travel across the border to work in Queensland each and every day and do a great job for the Sunshine State we need there of course to be exemptions for those people as well. But we’ll get those exemptions, we’ll make sure that the supply chain and the logistics as far as transporting food, transporting goods, transporting such important things as medicines can happen across border. And I know the great job that James McTavish does as Cross Border Commissioner for NSW. I know there’ll be very good rules and regulations put in place to ensure that we still get those logistics and freight supply chains operating as efficiently as they do now and will continue into the future.
PETER GLEESON:
Now let’s talk aviation. Now REX the regional airline is talking grounding all of its routes, all of its flights except for Queensland. It’s asked you guys for some support. Do you think you’ll be able to help the aviation industry? I mean obviously REX is just one component. There’s wild speculation that Virgin won’t come through this and that Qantas obviously laying off 20,000 staff. How important is aviation and what measures are in place to try and save these guys?
MICHAEL MCCORMACK:
It’s critical Peter and you’ve summed it up. I’ve reached out to the airline executives and spoke to each and every one of them before we put our package of measure is place last week – $715 million as far as making sure that fuel excise, making sure that Airservices fees, making sure that security screening charges. Already that means $159 million back straight onto the bottom lines of the aviation sector because we backdated it to February 1. But overall a $715 million package for the aviation industry. Yes I will continue to work closely with the likes of REX. Yes, intrastate flights are so necessary in Queensland and REX has already said it will continue those whilst looking at obviously other runs in other states. Interstate travel of course very, very difficult. It is a critical time and having spoken to REX, having spoken to, of course Qantas and Virgin, right down to the charter companies, even such charter companies as Wagga Air Centre where Chris Cabot runs a very good operation. I’ve been speaking to them, we want to work with them as best we can to make sure that we’ve got the right measures in place. Yes, there is more we can and must do and we will in close cooperation and collaboration with the airline industry, need it to come out the other side and together we will.
PETER GLEESON:
Alright now, as the Deputy Prime Minister you’re one of our obvious political leaders. I want to ask you about the psyche of the nation, in particular regional parts of Australia. We’re now seeing, en masse, the cancellation of big, big events and in particular, small events, you know those events in regional and country Australia like, you know racing carnival, all that sort of stuff Michael. I mean what do you say to your fellow countrymen, you know along the lines of making sure that they don’t, people are anxious, how do we pick these guys up?
MICHAEL MCCORMACK:
We’re all in this together. There’s one thing that we have got at the moment in regional Australia Peter that you would well know about and that is we’ve got a few green shoots because we’ve had a bit of recent rainfall so our farmers are getting busy buying seed and fertiliser and planting crops for some time, for the first time for many, many years so that’s a good thing. And when there’s green shoots there’s positivity in regional Australia. But you’re right, the local racing carnival, I know the Albury Cup was run last week without a crowd. Mathew Cahill won his fifth cup, and the horse Spunlago paid $58 but those cup carnivals, they’re the biggest economic drivers for sport and social fabric in any given town in most instances. I know the Murrumbidgee Turf Club at Wagga Wagga; first Friday in May, it’s like the first Tuesday in November for the rest of nation and we look forward to that cup carnival every year. Steve Keene is going to run it, but they’re going to run it without a crowd so at least they’re getting the horses on the paddock even if the footballers and the netballers are at home twiddling their thumbs. But I say to Australians we’re all in this together, be your best selves. As best you can stay in your own localities, you need to follow the advice of the Chief Medical Officer. We will get through this together. It’s going to be hard, it’s going to be very difficult, particularly when it gets cold and hopefully wet in the middle of winter when there’s no sport on, potentially of course. Most of the competitions are looking to June now before they resume training or indeed if they do get on the paddock. But we’re all in this together, and obviously with the AFL and the NRL suspending their seasons they’re going to have to watch something on television other than the footy.
PETER GLEESON:
Alright before we head to a break now, look there’s been some [inaudible] out there in recent days. You know there have been people flocking from the city to the country. I heard that a little place called St George in Western Queensland had been inundated with some city folk stripping the supermarket shelves bare. And then you had those youngsters, those millennials on the beaches, sort of not respecting the social distancing pledge or plea from the Prime Minister, what do you say to these people?
MICHAEL MCCORMACK:
You need to think of others and I know that the little independent grocer at Weethalle, indeed Peter and this is a very sad story. The grocers and supermarkets at Batlow and Tumbarumba, so hard hit by the recent bushfires, had their supermarkets stripped bare by busloads of people apparently coming from metropolitan areas and taking absolutely everything. You can’t believe this unless you saw the photos. Not one item, not a single food item, not a single item left on the shelf. Well that has to stop and I’m glad I spoke to Peter Dutton, the Home Affairs Minister. They’ve looked at the packaging being sent overseas and goods such as hand sanitiser and indeed some of the food items, well they’ll become contraband. Those shipments, those containers that were full of regional supermarket goods will be seized and they will be redistributed back to the regions as they should. People are not going to be let them get away with this. Of course the supermarkets are minimising the number of items being sold and if busloads of people are arriving on their doorstep well they’ll be asked to show ID and cause as to why they should be allowed in the shop and indeed shop in those supermarkets. So I’m glad that the supermarkets chains are taking some responsibility as far as this is concerned. I know there’s more security and let me tell you state police will be called in. I know they’re already patrolling in some capital cities the aisles of supermarkets and that needs unfortunately to continue. Because as you’ve described them, they’re [inaudible]. [Inaudible] happened to be a very good race horse back in I think the 1920s but these people aren’t being very good. They’re not being Australian, they need to think of other people.
PETER GLEESON:
Michael McCormack always great to have you on Sky News across Australia.
MICHAEL MCCORMACK:
Anytime at all Peter.