JIM CHALMERS MP
SHADOW TREASURER
MEMBER FOR RANKIN
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC BRISBANE DRIVE
MONDAY, 12 APRIL 2021
SUBJECTS: Morrison’s bungled vaccine rollout and the economic recovery.
STEVE AUSTIN, HOST: Good afternoon to you Jim.
JIM CHALMERS, SHADOW TREASURER: Good afternoon, Steve, and well done for supporting those local artists. They’ve done it really tough over the last year or more, so it's great to hear you give them some airtime.
AUSTIN: Every day, every day, Mr. Chalmers they get airtime of one type or another. What's Labor's solution to where Australia is with the vaccine rollout? All our deadlines are gone now. We've got the problem where we didn't order or pay for enough alternative options for vaccine. What's Labor's alternative Jim Chalmers?
CHALMERS: I think you're right that is really the big issue. I mean every other country or other countries with whom we compare ourselves did enough deals so that if something went wrong with one provider or another they've spread the risk a little bit. So most countries have got five or six deals. I think the UK has got seven deals. Here in Australia we have much less than that and so what that means is, when we have an issue like we're experiencing now with the AstraZeneca vaccine, then the government hasn't done the work to make sure that our risks are spread out. That’s really one of the main reasons why we are falling way behind the rest of the world when it comes to getting the vaccines away and that has consequences for people's health, obviously, but also consequences for the economy and jobs because it risks more lockdowns for longer and we don't want to see that. So you ask rightly what should have been done differently, well that's the main thing, the government should have had more deals we've been saying that for some months. The government went down the wrong path there. When it comes to what happens now, clearly, there needs to be some kind of remedial action because the government went from promising 4 million vaccines last month, they got nowhere near that, then they said every Australian would have a vaccine by the end of October. Then they said only the first shot, then they said by the end of the year and now the Prime Minister popped onto Facebook last night and said that he couldn't guarantee that everyone would get one even by the end of the year. So it's a shambles and we need to do what we can to fix it. There are some ideas that we've put forward already. Clearly the government needs to work more closely with the states, hopefully that is now happening via the National Cabinet. Clearly the government should be considering things like mass vaccination sites. People have got different ideas about that but other countries have deployed that model -
AUSTIN: Let me jump in there. If we don't have the vaccine there's no point having the sites so is there anything we could do to make up for the shortfall in vaccines? It doesn't appear to me that there's any way of getting new or different vaccines, other than buying China's vaccine, the Sinovac.
CHALMERS: I don't think that's the case Steve, the government came out after they had to fess up to the AstraZeneca change and what that meant for falling short of their promised vaccinations, the government came out and said that they'd secured another 20 million Pfizer vaccines. Then we found out that that wasn't until towards the end of the year. There are deals to be done. I mean other countries seem to be doing this effectively, my colleague Mark Butler was talking just today about the fact that the United States can do 4.6 million vaccinations in one day. We've done a million so far, overall -
AUSTIN: But isn't that because the United States has multiple, numerous medical facilities where they can actually make it? Australia has one.
CHALMERS: Well no, part of the story is that the United States had more irons in the fire than we did.
AUSTIN: But they can manufacture it, Australia has one manufacturing point.
CHALMERS: But that doesn't mean that we can't access vaccines -
AUSTIN: So we should be buying vaccines from the United States?
CHALMERS: We should be buying vaccines from multiple places, from the various providers, that's why we needed more deals from the beginning rather than just a handful. That's the main reason why we're experiencing such difficulty now in getting vaccines into people's arms. But there are deals to be done. So I think the main thing here is the government did all the announcements, all the marketing, all the spin, they slapped the Liberal Party logo on some of those announcements so we've had plenty of announcements, but we hadn't have enough urgency. We haven't had enough deals. We haven't had enough planning. It seems to me from where I sit, that all the other countries who are galloping ahead of us in terms of vaccinations, they didn't wait to actually have the vaccines before they had a plan to deploy it. The government seems to have been on the back foot from the beginning and what that means is we are increasingly hostage in this country [to the vaccine rollout], having done all the right things by each other. The credit belongs to the Australian people for the way that we've dealt with COVID-19 overall. But all of this debacle risks squandering what Australians have achieved together because we are on the back foot. Now, other countries are doing a much better job and I think the Australian people are entitled to ask why having made all these promises that government cannot deliver on them.
AUSTIN: Well let me jump in there. You for many years, you being the ALP Jim, the ALP has been telling the government to follow expert advice. The federal government and the states for that matter, did follow the expert advice that came from Brendan Murphy and his team. It looks like there was an error. Why are you criticising the federal government when they followed the expert advice. The expert advice says they followed their advice, and there's been a problem, isn't that a problem of just following the expert advice?
CHALMERS: Well the advice that we're aware of for some months now - and I think nobody could accuse us of being inconsistent here, we've been saying it since last year, deep into last year, and we've been reflecting the advice that we get as we consult with experts around the place - is that it is better to have more than just a couple of irons in the fire when it comes to -
AUSTIN: We know that. We've established that but the federal government was following the expert advice. The experts drew up the plan, the federal government announced the plan.
CHALMERS: You're right that we've said all along, that we should be listening to the experts and when it comes to the specifics of the AstraZeneca change that was announced as it relates to under 50s obviously, we take that very seriously. There is a broader issue here, which is in our view is what we've been saying consistent with the advice is we've had issues around the planning and we've had issues around insufficient deals. We have had, I think, rank incompetence from the government when it comes to this. They’re always there for the big announcement. They've made the big promises. They've failed to follow through. They've gone through all of this finger pointing. But at the end of the day the federal government is responsible for getting this vaccine away, other countries are doing it successfully. I think Australians are entitled to ask why the Australian Government isn't?
AUSTIN: But let me come back to my question. They followed the expert advice. This is not to point the finger of blame at the experts, it's simply they followed the advice and they announced that advice. Doesn't this mean that sometimes it's not always perfect, to follow the expert advice. The nature of politics is you have to make a policy decision. But these guys followed the expert advice, and it wasn't 100 per cent?
CHALMERS: I responded to that, about the specifics of the AstraZeneca change which was announced, I think, on Thursday night, if memory serves. What I'm saying is one of the reasons why the government has not had the capacity, despite those kind of bumps in the road to get vaccines into people's arms like other countries are doing successfully is because they didn't do the right thing by striking enough deals and having enough vaccines. They've obviously got issues with deploying via the GPs as well, who are very confused and very disappointed that there aren't enough doses available. So the point I'm making is, we don't quibble with the specific advice like that received on AstraZeneca, we haven't done that. What we have said is, other countries have been able to deal with problems like that because they've done more deals, they've got access to more vaccines. It's very strange that a government which brags about having dealt with COVID-19 so well has failed at this probably most important hurdle.
AUSTIN: Thanks for your time Jim Chalmers.
CHALMERS: Thanks very much Steve.
ENDS
