E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TELEVISION INTERVIEW
TODAY SHOW
TUESDAY 1 DECEMBER 2020

SUBJECTS: Australia re-open; Anger over China’s attacks on Australia; Letters to Santa; Christmas season.

ALLISON LANGDON, HOST: Australia, folks, is reopening, woo hoo!. Queensland, two hundred fifty days of hard border lockdown finally done, millions from Sydney and Victoria now welcome back to the Sunshine State. To discuss, I'm joined by Shadow Minister for Government Services Bill Shorten in Canberra and Triple M's Gus Worland, too. He's here in the studio. Nice to see you physically here, Gus. Although still socially distant.

GUS WORLAND, TRIPLE M: Exactly right. I can't wait for the three of us to be together.

LANGDON: Well, that would be a party. Now, Bill. I mean, I thought you'd be on the first flight heading north, but it's an exciting day, isn't it?

BILL SHORTEN, MEMBER FOR MATIBYRNONG: Yeah, I'm rapt. My wife, Chloe's family, all live in Brisbane and Queensland, so she's going up as soon as she can. I'll go up a little later because Parliament's still sitting, but it's been a year basically for most Victorians who've got family in Queensland to be able to see them. And so there's little children getting older, there’s older members of the family who occasionally are doing it tough. So I just want my wife to see her mum and dad.

LANGDON: Yeah. I mean, I think that's a sentiment shared by many, many Australians. We heard people at the airport this morning taking their grandkids up to meet their grandparents for the first time. Gus, I mean, do you think this will be the moment we look back and say that was the day we said goodbye to the misery of 2020 COVID?

WORLAND: I certainly hope so. I mean, just the spirit of everyone. I'm loving people running up to people at the airport, people now going to the airport, phoning in this morning on radio as I was driving in, I'm on the way to the airport. I can see my grandma. I'm going to see my lover. I'm going to see my child. It's just brilliant. And the Aussie spirit made that. We've been absolutely hammered this year and we just need that sort of positive boost.

LANGDON: Absolutely. And I mean, the only thing now is, I mean, border closures, as we know, have divided this country. It's nice to see most of them gone. But come on, WA huh?

SHORTEN: Yeah. I think the West Australian government's going to make an announcement. I'm not sure that it'll be the full lifting. I mean, part of me wonders if West Australians aren't enjoying being a separate country at the moment, though.

LANGDON: I think we all know that they are very happy just keeping themselves separated. And there’s a bit of a shift now because I want to talk about China. That relationship got a whole lot worse overnight. Beijing doubling down on its accusations of war crimes against Australian forces. It follows the Prime Minister's furious response to a tweet by a top Chinese official depicting a fake picture of an Australian soldier holding a knife to the throat of an Afghan child. Bill, this is disgraceful. And to be honest, I think it's juvenile. Your thoughts?

SHORTEN: It's completely offensive. Labor and Liberal are one on this issue. It's offensive. It's immature. But this is part of an ongoing - it's a classic troll attack by the Chinese. I mean, we've seen our coal held up, our sugar, next week it's the barley. Then the week after it was the lobster, then it was the wine. And now it's this social media attack. These guys are acting like bullies and I think they underestimate Australians. You know, we're always happy to look at where we can do things better, I think, in this country. But no one bullies us. It doesn't matter how big they are. And so, yep, I absolutely agree with Scott Morrison. And Labor made that very clear yesterday.

LANGDON: I'm just not sure what they're trying to achieve here, Bill.

SHORTEN: Well, they've got this expression, Wolf Warrior diplomacy, and I think that they haven't enjoyed some of the commentary. And maybe our government hasn't pulled every rein exactly correctly. But at a certain point, you just say we're Aussies, we stick together. I think in my own opinion that they want to demonstrate to other countries that they can call the shots. And Australia has a lot of trade with China. So they're trying to teach us a lesson and perhaps through other people, I mean, the interim period in America, as they move from one president to another, perhaps China feels they can be the big authority and the big power. But I think they've underestimated our resolve. And I also think, what is Twitter doing? You know, it's not their job to be a social media arm of the Chinese propaganda unit. So they should pull that image down.

LANGDON: Yeah, absolutely disgraceful that Twitter hasn't acted on these so far. Gus, do you think our relationship with China can ever recover?

WORLAND: I think it will at some stage. But the problem I have and I'm listening to both of you guys and agreeing with you, but they don't seem to care. That's the problem for me is the fact that they feel like they can do whatever they want. They can sort of run roughshod over us. So I'm worried about that. But, yeah, time will heal everything eventually. But they certainly have got the upper hand at the moment.

LANGDON: Yeah, I don't know. I just have this feeling it's going to backfire on them. The whole world is watching closely right now. Now, another development overnight. The Defence Force chief, Angus Campbell, backing down over his move to strip medals from three thousand Special Forces troops in Afghanistan. I mean, Bill, I was so happy to hear this. I think, you know, why should all of our brave, dedicated soldiers, some who ultimately gave their life pay the price for the actions of a few here? Has common sense prevailed.

SHORTEN: I think it has actually. I've had the chance to get to know some of the families of veterans in special forces who were killed in Afghanistan. I can only imagine how upset they were that their sons, who've made the ultimate sacrifice all of a sudden, that the little medal that they got, the Meritorious Badge Unit badge, was going to be taken off them. So I think on balance, Angus Campbell is a very respected senior leader and Defence has pulled the right rein here.

LANGDON: Yeah, I mean, I think he initially did this for the right reasons, but it was the wrong move, Gus, your thoughts?

WORLAND: They went way too soon, too quickly. And then to throw everyone under the bus at the same time was wrong. And it was completely the wrong move. He's under pressure now, but he's probably got enough brownie points to survive this. But at the end of the day, the families, that's what Bill's talking about, the families of these people that did nothing wrong. And also, remember, it's only alleged the other guys as well. So since when in this country have we decided to give everyone the guilty tick when we haven't had the full look at it in a court of law. So that's what it's all about. And it's right now, what they did two weeks ago was wrong.

LANGDON: Yeah, very good point there. Now, let's end on something much more festive, some very sweet children's letters to Santa, one child writing Dear Santa, I hope you're not mad at me for lying on my test. I pinky promise never to do it again. Can you please give me a blue scooter for Christmas? Sorry again for lying. And another telling the big man, I don't think anyone tells you this, but thank you. You sacrifice your social life to make kids happy. I mean, none of us have really had much of a social life this year, but Gus, any confessions you'd like to make before Santa visits?

WORLAND: There's been there's been a couple things no doubt about it. What I love about this story is just the kids, you know, how beautiful. And that's what we should be focussing on. And also them writing an actual letter, like on paper with a pen like I can't remember the last time anyone actually did that and mailed it. Our family, my kids. We've got three teenagers. We still write to Santa. And I think it's beautiful that he writes back as well. And he's a part of our lives. And after this year, particularly Christmas is going to be that important, now the borders are down as well.

LANGDON: Yeah, that's very, very sweet. And you nicely dodged the question here. Is there anything you need to confess to Santa? But Bill you'll answer it, won't you?

SHORTEN: Yeah, nothing like holding the parcel. Listen, I have got a confession to make. We love putting up the Christmas tree in our house, that's already gone up, I managed to nick off to Canberra, and Chloe got the neighbours to put the lights up yesterday. But my concession is this. Over the years you collect, you have the debate, do you get the manufactured Christmas tree or do you get the real thing? And I think after some years, Chloe said we'll just get a, you know, a manufactured one. And so we've collected the bits of two different Christmas trees. And Chloe sent me out to find where I'd stored it. And I realised that I've got the top part of one tree and the bottom part of the other tree. And we put it up on Saturday, and I realised that I had this stumpy little top of the tree and a much bigger bottom of the tree. So I drowned the top part of the tree in tinsel. And the problem is it doesn't fit. And so anyway, it did fall over on Saturday night.

WORLAND: You’ve got more money than God, you’ve got to cough up for a freshie.

SHORTEN: You're a media star, you guys!.

WORLAND: Oh, my wife's English. So if it’s not fresh, it's not on. that smell. Oh, that is so good.

LANGDON: Oh, isn't it nice? It's the 1st of December, people. It's a good time of year. All right. Thank you for joining us this morning.