E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC RADIO SYDNEY
MONDAY, 10 AUGUST 2020

SUBJECTS: Impact of COVID-19 on communities; mandatory mask wearing and vaccines; lessons to be learned from COVID-19.

RICHARD GLOVER, HOST: The Monday Political Forum, Bill Shorten is the Shadow Minister for the NDIS and government services, former Labor leader, of course, Christine Forster, Liberal councillor for the city of Sydney, and Zali Stegall, Independent MP for Warringah. Now Bill is with us from Melbourne. Good afternoon, Bill. At least I think you’re in Melbourne, maybe in Canberra. Where are you, Bill?

BILL SHORTEN, MEMBER FOR MARIBYRNONG: I'm right here, Richard

GLOVER: But where is here?

SHORTEN: Oh sorry, I thought we were having the usual comms issues. I live in the inner north west of Melbourne, at home. So we were a hotspot suburb, so we've actually been in Stage 3 since July the 1st. So it's been quite a journey, the last forty days. And it’s not over yet.

GLOVER: Well, I’m going to ask you all about the mood, but let me just welcome Christine Forster as well, and Zali Stegall, who are both on the line in Sydney. Hi, Christine. Hi, Zali.

CHRISTINE FORSTER, SYDNEY COUNCILLOR: Hi, Richard.

ZALI STEGALL, MEMBER FOR WARRINGAH: Hi, Richard.

GLOVER: Let's start just with this question about the mood that people are in where you are, whether it's the suburbs of Melbourne or Sydney. Are people complacent, anxious, depressed sick of it? What's the mood? Bill, let's start with you.

SHORTEN: Well, all of the above, and hello to Zali and Christine. The cycle of our days in Melbourne is that you wait for the statistics to start getting leaked, how many cases there are, what the fatality rate is. And then we get the press conference. And that can influence the daily mood, quite literally, that bit of news every 24 hours is the key information, which I think most Melbournians and Victorians are seeking. Of course, some are doing it much harder than others. There's the sick and the elderly, our frontline health workers are just exhausted. But small business doing it really hard. Retail, hospitality. And I also particularly feel for all the people who've got family members they can't see, grandparents who can't see newborn children, parents who want to see their grandparents who are not doing well. So it's a bit demoralised. It's a bit atomised. But of course, when the sun comes out, it all seems a little bit better.

GLOVER: Are people taking it, it did seem that some people weren't taking is seriously for a week or two. There was that terrible figure, about a quarter of people not being home who were supposed to be home. Do you think people are taking more seriously now?

SHORTEN: Yeah, that's changed. I sincerely hope it's changed. As I said, my side of town has been in restrictions for the whole of July. And I think a lot of Melbournians are angry to hear that some people aren't taking it seriously. Like, we've got to beat this. We're putting up with restrictions. People are losing jobs. Small businesses are doing it really hard. And then you hear about some idiots who think that the rules don't apply to them. And that's really frustrating. I think everything's got a lot more serious, though, since the masks were proposed on July 23^rd and now the Stage 4 lockdowns and curfew.

GLOVER: Masks, I know there's a debate about them, but they are a kind of visual reminder, aren't they? That not only is not only effective in themselves to some degree, but they’re a sort of reminder to people that this is serious. You could do all the other things.

SHORTEN: Yeah, I'm a supporter of the mandatory masks. I mean, initially, when we had our public housing lockdown and I started to learn to wear a mask, it was uncomfortable. I’d do the shopping and you'd feel like a bit of a wuss. You know, you're wearing a mask, no one else is. But that's why mandating the masks has made sense. And I think it's focussed everyone on ‘we've got to do this’. So I actually think that's a strategic public health measure, you know, the quality of masks may vary, but the fact that everyone has to wear one has got everyone focussed on what's important.

GLOVER: Bill Shorten is with us, so is Christine Forster and Zali Stegall. Christine, what's the mood where you are? Do you think people are taking it seriously, being compliant and all of that?

FORSTER: Well, look, to be honest, Richard, it was I think things were kind of starting to relax a little bit prior to the terrible spike that’s happening in Victoria, and, you know, up until the spike happened the last month in in Melbourne, people were really starting to get out and about a bit more (audio buffering). You know, I would think in Crown Street, Bourke Street, around these sorts of areas, crowd numbers were probably getting up to about 40 percent of normal on a Friday, Saturday night. So things were starting to get it back to a little bit more normality. Those numbers of people about now plummeted again because, you know, people have seen what's going on in Victoria and how terrible it is down there. And, you know, that I think has brought on a second wave of concern and apprehension, and people are starting to stay indoors again. So, you know, and that's had a really, really huge knock on effect to the businesses around this area, across the city of Sydney. Of course, you know, small businesses in the CBD who depend on there being, you know, the tens of thousands of workers in the CBD, hundreds of thousands of workers in the CBD every day, have really, really suffered. In my area around Surry Hills, Taylor Square, you know, there's a lot of cafes, restaurants. It's a dining district. It's an entertainment district, you know, where the gay clubs are and where there's drag acts on, used to be every night, and nightclubs - all those businesses have just suffered terribly. And people's mood as a result is pretty despondent. You know, it's been a long, drawn out process. People thought it would pass I think, in a couple of months, and in fact, it hasn't. And with this spike in Victoria, it's just gotten worse and worse and people are feeling more alarmed. And as I say, they're not coming out the way they were just a month or so ago. And I think everybody is just feeling that there’s no end in sight at this point, which is pretty terrible. And as I say, the small business men and women in this part of the world are just suffering awfully.

GLOVER: And Christine, on the Surry Hills, part of Sydney, take us to Manly, Zali. What’s the feel?

STEGALL: Yeah, look I would probably echo what Christine was saying. I guess there's that sort of baited breath of waiting to see how the New South Wales numbers evolve compared to the spike that’s happened in Victoria. I mean, it's all happened at a time where we were just starting to reopen. Restrictions were easing. Businesses were starting to get back on their feet. Manly, Warringah, is a high tourism, hospitality, retail kind of sector, so their industries that have really been decimated. So we're getting a lot of, you know, correspondence with the electorate, in terms of a lot of people very stressed because they've lost jobs. We've had we had one of the highest increases in unemployment of electorates around Australia. So very focussed on that. And how for many sole traders, small businesses, how they're going. But look, at the same time, the announcements in relation to extending JobKeeper have really helped that. But there is that high sense of anxiety that we don't want to see, you know, numbers increase in New South Wales. So everyone's really holding their breath. And look, I don’t know if Warringah has a lot of multinationals or dual nationals, but we are also getting a lot of contact from people, you know, that have difficulties with our border restrictions and wanting a little bit more flexibility and compassion. So it's that fine line between we really want to emphasise health, necessary health restrictions and keeping numbers at bay, whilst managing people's mental health and the consequences and impacts that are coming from this, which are you know, the economic crisis is huge, but there are also flow on effects that that need to be managed here.

GLOVER: So this might be a person, for instance who’s an Australian, but their partner is not an Australian, but they live, they’re currently in London or somewhere. At the moment, they're not allowed to come in.

STEGALL: Yeah look, this is such a fast evolving situation. When our border closures were introduced, it was so rapid. So a lot of people found themselves stranded overseas. I mean, we have a case of some elderly grandparents were in the UK. Their family is here living in the electorate. They've sent their dog. They've they sold their house, they’ve packed up their luggage. Everything has been sent to Australia. And their flight was literally the day after the closures. And they've been unable to fly and haven’t been able to get exemptions and we've been trying to help them. So, you know, there's a lot of people who are you know, this is not about wanting to create a health risk. This is simply about, you know, people's lives that get really caught mid-pace between these events that are rapidly changing.

GLOVER: Bill Shorten is here, as is Christine Forster and Zali Stegall. In Victoria, masks have become mandatory, but not in New South Wales, where the Premier is focussed on encouraging people to wear them, especially those unable to socially distance. Are we generally better to encourage rather than legislate on matters like this? And what are those who say that taking that taking the vaccine, should we get one, should also be mandatory? Bill Shorten.

SHORTEN: As a general rule, you're always better to encourage than legislate. But can I just say on masks with the lived experience, I started wearing a mask before it was mandated and it's a bit inconvenient. But you noticed that a lot of people aren't. And that almost creates pressure not to. I actually think in this public health emergency, once you mandate it, other than a few very unusual people who view it as an extension of the 5G conspiracy, when you mandate it, it's a bit like a speed limit. One says, right, well, that's what we've got to do. And overnight, the masks came on. And can I just say to people who think wearing a mask is really odd, you get used to it. And it’s a temporary thing, but you get used to it. So I really would swear by mandating it, because that way you avoid people feeling like oh, I’m being a wuss or being weak by wearing a mask.

GLOVER: Christine Foster, do you go along with that? You know, there are circumstances where you are made to feel a little odd that you're being overly cautious by wearing one, wouldn’t mandating it mean that we didn't have to have that feeling?

FORSTER: It would. But I think I would agree with the Premier on this one. The reality is Richard, thankfully, the figures in New South Wales have been contained. You know, New South Wales has done a great job of quarantining. It's done a terrific job of contact tracing, and we've done a great job of containing the outbreaks when they've occurred. I mean, our figures have been under 20, even with the spike and the flow on effects from the spike in Victoria, under 20 a day. So I think unless we had the kind of situation that's unfolding in Victoria, I think, you know, I'm not a health professional, but it strikes me that it's probably that we're not at the stage that Victoria is where we would need to mandate the wearing of masks. There just aren't that many infected people in the community that we know of. And the people that we've learnt are infected are being very well contained, unlike apparently has happened in Victoria.

GLOVER: But some people say, why wait till we've got a problem?

FORSTER: And that's a fair that's a fair point. But as I say, as a Liberal, I tend to want to give people incentives to do it, rather than mandating they do it. And I think that what the Premier is doing is the right thing, saying if you're in a situation where you can't socially distance, then you should wear a mask and you know, you should feel responsible to do that. I mean, I don't wear a mask, if I'm walking around the street, but if I'm going into an environment where I'm expected to wear one like a doctor surgery or what have you, then I'll wear one.

GLOVER: Zali Stegall, should the masks be mandatory?

STEGALL: Look, I'm on the fence on this one. I must say, look, having worn one around my shopping yesterday around the supermarket, it was interesting to see the evolution that there are more and more people wearing them. So you're starting to feel less definitely like less the odd person out. You know, I was I was very conscious as we're gearing up to coming down to Parliament and we've got quarantine restrictions for Victorian MP’s, I felt very conscious from Sydney we needed to also be very careful. It's different. I do think it's difficult to mandate. But I do feel differently about the vaccine, for example. So the masks I understand culturally that there can be some difficulties. It's not the most comfortable thing to wear. But I accept Bill's comment that you do get used to it. But I definitely feel that once we have a vaccine, that that's got to become something, you know, from a public health benefit, that's something that would need to be widely pushed just as most of our vaccination programs are, you know, for the benefit of society.

GLOVER: We don't we don't usually make them compulsory. There's a piece in the Sydney Morning Herald today, for instance, by someone saying, look, it should be compulsory, you should be forced to have the vaccine. Is that the way to go?

STEGALL: Well, forcing. I mean, at the moment, the way we have for childhood immunisation, you know, essentially you're not entitled to child care, without having vaccination. A lot of centres won't be able to take on those children. I think there are measures of weighing, whilst not absolutely forced, there are strong incentives for it.

GLOVER: Bill Shorten, do you go along with that? You know, you could make taking the vaccine dependent on getting government benefits or something like that?

SHORTEN: Yes, I do, actually. It's interesting. And I was listening carefully to Christine and what Zali said about Sydney and masks. I too believe that you should always encourage, not mandate, but I've seen what you've got to do in Victoria. And I'd rather that if we if you know where you're going to get to, you might as well get there quicker and just get on with it. And that's what I think with vaccines. I wouldn't send someone who's an anti-vaxxer to jail. I'm not interested in providing a soapbox for conspiracy, fanatics who think it's all a conspiracy. But I think that it's just part of the social contract. You know, we like to get our garbage picked up. We like to get the benefits of citizenship. And if one of the benefits of citizenship is that you have to occasionally do things to enjoy those benefits then you just do them. And I think in terms of this vaccine, having seen the damage that we're seeing in our economy, the loss of jobs, but also having seen the loss of life, I had a neighbour two doors down who was caught up in one of the aged care disasters. I see the exhausted frontline medical staff. There are doctors in ICU’s now, the idea that someone wants to practise some theory of I shouldn't have to be vaccinated’ whilst thousands of other people are getting ill. To me, it's selfish.

GLOVER: So just as we have no jab, no play with the play school, with childcare funding, you would have something similar to that about accessing government benefit, for instance.

SHORTEN: Yes, I wouldn't I wouldn't make it something you put somebody in jail over. But you can't just live in this world where you just, you take all the benefits and don't give anything back.

GLOVER: Bill Shorten is here, so’s Christine Foster and Zali Stegall. The COVID-19, according to some, has been a stress test for various aspects of our society, showing the dangers of, for instance, some say, a casualised workforce in which people don't have paid sick leave. Another example, some talk about an underfunded aged care system lacking proper regulation, which they say has been stress tested by COVID in a way that shows us what's wrong with that system. What lessons do you think can be learnt from COVID and its impact? And what do we need to change about the way things work based on its lessons? Bill Shorten.

SHORTEN: Well, I think aged care has been found wanting. I think insecure work, especially in industries where we've seen outbreaks of this virus, show that people who have to choose between losing money or going to work and being sick have highlighted the problem of insecure work. I saw in the public housing towers in my electorate we’re relying on buildings which were built 60 years ago and just haven't coped in the close quarters for a very infectious virus. But I also think on the bigger picture, too, it's shown us that we need to go back to making more things in this country, not being just part of a global supply chain, but manufacturing our own PPE, manufacturing our own equipment. So I think this virus is like a dye, which has seeped into the system and shown that where the fault lines are and I mean, for our young people, their future is a lot less clear. You know, what jobs will they get in the future? And a lot of those jobs have dried up in periods of high unemployment, and even down to something which I thought would never happen. But we're seeing the re-emergence of states’ rights in a way which was unthinkable even 12 months ago. So I think there's a lot going on and a lot of assumptions and the safety net has to be reinforced and questioned. Are they working the way we think they should work?

GLOVER: Bill Shorten, is here, Christine Forster and Zali Stegall, Christine, Bill mentions poor aged care, casualised workforce, the lack of manufacturing capacity in this country. Do you agree with that? Are there other things that we should learn from the kind of stress tests that COVID has given our system?

FORSTER: Yeah, I actually 100 percent agree with what Bill has observed there. Obviously, the aged care sector wasn't properly prepared for this. And I think what the whole COVID-19 pandemic has taught us is that we need to plan a bit better for risk, for situations that perhaps can't be foreseen or that we could not have imagined beforehand, but that we need to be able to stress test ourselves and our businesses and our industries for those kinds of situations should they arise. And I think it's really taught us that people and businesses and industries need to be innovative. They need to be flexible. They need to be able to respond. I mean, I think the Federal Government has done a great job of showing flexibility and pragmatism with its response to JobKeeper and JobSeeker. When it was first introduced, it was going to run out in August. And now, you know, the need has been identified that it has to extend and be stepped down in a in a phased way that continues to support people. So I think we've all probably had a lesson in we can't be complacent. We shouldn't get we shouldn't get too comfortable. And we need to be prepared for outcomes that perhaps we haven't foreseen.

GLOVER: Zali Stegall, if this is if this is a stress test for our systems, what have we learnt, what do we need to change after this?

STEGALL: Yeah, look, I mean, I agree with what both Christine and Bill have said. I think what has also been highlighted, though, is the inequities around some of our groups when it comes to employment. And look, I feel strongly that it has highlighted maybe the difference in security between men and women's work. You know, we know women make up 53 percent of casual jobs and they are overwhelmingly the jobs that have been lost through the pandemic, as well as the jobs for youth. And we know that that is still an area that's not really being addressed. That's still an area where there is a crack socially. And I think it was interesting, the Grattan Institute released today some numbers around the difference between gender opportunities and pay and where your life’s timed. And to me, the figures released today that it took between a man and a woman, two 25 year olds from there onwards, if they have children, there will be a two million dollar difference in earnings for the woman to the man. Now, that, to me, shows such an inequity that we have opportunities to reframe and restructure and fix those gaps so we do improve productivity. So, yes, the pandemic has highlighted a lot of issues, especially around casualised workforces. And I think maybe stresses around, you know, we have high levels of household debts, in not much job security. So these are all issues that we need to look at and look at. So, you know, I agree with Christine. We have to be more prepared for, the crisises that come. We have with we've come off horrendous bushfire season. We've now got a pandemic. 2020 has really been a year to show that resilience, you know, you need to have a plan and you need to be able to pivot to adapt to circumstance.

GLOVER: Five to six is the time. The Monday Political Forum, with us this week Bill Shorten, the Shadow Minister for the NDIS and Government Services, former Labor leader, of course. Christine Forster, is a Liberal councillor for the city of Sydney, and Zali Stegall is the independent MP for Warringah. On Drive, we've been talking about the facts you find you still know, because you learnt them doing a school project as a kid, maybe when you were ten or eleven or twelve years old, getting the cardboard out and all of that. What subject can you still discuss with aplomb, based on a school project? You did a long time ago, Zali Stegall.

STEGALL: Ah, Richard, you've got me. I can't think of any. My schooling is a bit of a blur.

GLOVER: You were too busy skiing.

STEGALL: I was squeezing it, I was studying by correspondence and squeezing it between skiing and racing. So I was, yeah no I can’t think of it, I’ll have to pass.

GLOVER: You didn't get the cardboard and the clag glue out and start putting in pictures from pamphlets you've got from CSR?

STEGALL: No, I look, the best I can remember was being in about Year 5 and being given the choice between the girls were expected to do knitting and the boys are expected to do wood carving. And I already knew I was terrible at knitting, so I did wood carving. That was my learning.

GLOVER: Good on ya. Christine Forster, what do you find you still know, having done it as a school project, many years ago?

FORSTER: Well, I don't know that I can still talk with aplomb about it, Richard, but I have an abiding and enduring passion for the Anzac story. And when I was in Year 8, we were studying the First World War, and I did a bit of a project, which was really a bit of a rip off of Patsy Adam Smith's book, ‘The Anzacs and This Fabulous Century’, which was a television programme. I don't know whether you remember that.

GLOVER: Peter Luck, wasn't it?

FORSTER: Exactly, yeah. And I was gripped by This Fabulous Century and so I did a bit of a rip off, to be honest, sort of did my own version of This Fabulous Century talking about the Anzac Gallipoli campaign. And it's you know, it's still, the First World War and it's tragedy and the grand sweep that it was across the world is still a topic of enormous fascination for me. I've still got a lot of Les Carlyon books and others on my on my bookshelf that I that I dip into.

GLOVER: The thing that kids always loved about the Anzac story was that fabulous thing about the drip, drip, drip of the water into the cans to cause the guns to keep on firing. Once it made good their mistake, that was their escape. That was the best bit, wasn't it?

FORSTER: Phenomenal. You know, the evacuation of Gallipoli was just one of the greatest success stories of all time in military terms, I understand. And, you know, it's just all part of the magnificent legend

GLOVER: Still remembered from the school project, what about you, Bill Shorten?

SHORTEN: It’s a toss-up, but I remember whales, I did some project on whales. I'm not a whale expert these days. But one thing about whales, the sperm whale, is that it's it produces Ambergris, spelled A-M-B-E-R-G-R-I-S. And it's called whale vomit, but actually it's more valuable than gold.

GLOVER: Yeah that's right. And it washes up on distant coasts and is avidly collected, isn't it?

SHORTEN: Yeah, it was used before synthetics for perfumes, to strengthen perfumes and make them longer lasting. But the idea that the poor old whale could vomit up something more valuable than gold.

GLOVER: It sticks in the mind of an 11 year old, doesn't it?

SHORTEN: It does, and now I’ve - Einstein said he never would remember phone numbers. And someone said, why do you never remember phone numbers? He said, because I've got a finite number of brain cells and I don't want to tie up my brain cells with stuff I didn't need to know. Now I feel bad, I've told all your listeners about whale vomit. That’s another braincell gone.

GLOVER: That's not a waste of brain cells. That's a good use of them. We're out of time. But thank you very much to Bill Shorten in Melbourne. We're wishing everyone in Victoria well and thinking of you. And I think that, you know, Mr Morrison said the other day, if you're friends with someone in Melbourne, in Victoria, ring them up and, you know, try to give them a bit of support. I bet you agree with that.

SHORTEN: Yeah, I do. But spare us anti-Victorian memes for a few weeks yet, it's too soon.

GLOVER: Yeah, exactly. Bill Shorten, thank you very much. Christine Forster, thank you very much. And Zali Stegall, the independent MP for Warringah, thank you as well.