E&OE
Subjects: COVID-19, Eden-Monaro by-election, Regional Australia Institute 2031;
LEIGH RYAN
Saying a very good morning this morning to our Deputy Prime Minister, Michael McCormack, good morning.
MICHAEL MCCORMACK
Good morning Leigh. Good morning, Poppy.
POPPY PENNY
Good morning. We took a chance there, the phone rang and we didn’t even answer it. We just answered it live on air. Imagine if it wasn’t you.
MICHAEL MCCORMACK
Oh, indeed. Well, on time every time.
LEIGH RYAN
Exactly right.
POPPY PENNY
As always.
LEIGH RYAN
Now, look, you’ve been a very busy man and of course, Government’s been very busy over the last week or so since we’ve last caught up with you, including a National Cabinet meeting yesterday, all about COVID-19. Michael, what’s the latest?
MICHAEL MCCORMACK
Well, certainly the latest is the fact that we are looking at easing more restrictions and through the State Premiers and through the Chief Ministers of the Territories, we need to, of course, get our economy back up and running. And everybody knows that getting cafés and getting restaurants and pubs and all that is really important, not just for those businesses but for community psychology. We all need to get out and about again. That said and I know there has been some restrictions eased in New South Wales, Gladys Berejiklian announcing last week that now two people and kids could now visit other homes. But what we need to do is not be complacent.
What we need to do is, whilst I appreciate that there’s only 45 cases in the Murrumbidgee Local Health District, 39 of whom have recovered, but what we need to do is download the COVIDSafe app. What we need to do is keep doing what we’ve been asked to do by the Chief Medical Officer, Professor Brendan Murphy and the other medical experts and wait until those restrictions are eased. Wait until we’ve been given the all clear. I notice that when we go out and about, those of us who are actually going to offices to work, not necessarily working from home and I do commend those people for doing what they need to do, but we need to continue to follow the rules and obey the guidelines and download the app. It’s most important because if we do that, we’ll get community sport back. If we do that, we’ll get pubs re-opened and those businesses, let me tell you, they need it.
POPPY PENNY
Do we have an idea of when and what we’re likely to see in terms of the restrictions being lessened? There are rumours swelling that Friday could be the day where we see some restrictions lifted.
MICHAEL MCCORMACK
Friday could well be the day, Poppy. And I know the Restaurant and Catering Association, I know the Australian Hotels Association have given the Government guidelines by which they would like to see the Government allow them to reopen at some stage, but it’s really important and it could be well that there’s only table service, no bar service; it could be that, of course, social distancing measures are still put into place. But we just have to wait and see. States and Territories and the Prime Minister will meet again and of course, on Friday there may well be some restrictions eased. And of course, we all want sport back. We all want to be able to have large community gatherings and particularly funerals and particularly weddings, but we just have to follow the expert medical advice because what we don’t want to see is what happened 100 years ago and that was a second wave, mass outbreaks and they happened in regional areas. We lost 12,000 people back 100 years ago with the Spanish Flu. We don’t want to see that now. We’ve lost 96 and that’s very, very sad for their families. Of the 6,800 or so cases, more than 5,800 have recovered. So that’s an important number to remember. There are still about 24 people in critical care. But our regional areas don’t have the ICU beds available if there are mass outbreaks and so I commend what Jill Ludford and the Murrumbidgee Local Health District have done. I commend the work and the leadership that they’ve shown. And we just need people to download the COVIDSafe app and to follow the instructions that have been, you know, wisely laid out for them.
LEIGH RYAN
Now, very quickly, Jacinda Ardern, Prime Minister of New Zealand, joined the National Cabinet yesterday about creating a Trans-Tasman bubble, opening up the possibility of travel to New Zealand. That seemed to be flagged as something that would be happening later. Any indication on when those sort of travel restrictions may be eased?
MICHAEL MCCORMACK
Well, that may well happen in coming weeks but I don’t want to pre-empt anything because you never know when, you know, New Zealand may well get an outbreak. And look, we’ve got minimal flights from Auckland at the moment. But again, New Zealanders, by and large, have done the right thing, they shut down their entire nation. They went even far further than we did, but they’ve had good success too and so for a Trans-Tasman type bubble that we could place over New Zealand and over Australia and allow more flights to resume that might well be important.
We’re already getting lamb and crayfish and other goods out of Australia and to ports that we actually have never, in one sense, had markets before, which has been good for our farmers and good for our producers. But slowly, but surely we want to ease these restrictions. It could be a good first step to do it with, indeed, New Zealand because they’ve had a good success rate with their health as well.
POPPY PENNY
Now, away from COVID-19 news and in some political news for a bit of a change, a bit of a change of pace, there was some leaked text messages from Sky News yesterday between their National State leader, John Barilaro and yourself. Do you have a comment on that? Obviously, he was a little bit unhappy that you didn’t publicly endorse him to run for the vacant Eden-Monaro seat in the coming by-election. What’s your comment on that?
MICHAEL MCCORMACK
Well, Poppy, it was quite a spray but unnecessary given my strong support for his candidacy in two national media interviews, one of which was a press conference where we had a whole lot of media there and I backed him in, but I merely said that the local branches in Eden-Monaro would decide. And that’s how it’s been in our party – in The Nationals – for 100 years. We’re very democratic. The last thing I was going to do, as a Leader, was going to actually say, “That person, i.e. John Barilaro is the candidate and he will run and I back him.” Yes, I did endorse him, certainly endorsed him. He’s been very, very good for regional New South Wales but just to come in and anoint someone and take that autonomy away from the local branches, I didn’t think was appropriate. And he was a bit upset too that I did ring Sophie Wade, who was our candidate less than 12 months ago and she was a good candidate and you know, we need to remember that those people who do the hard yards and do the door-knocking and get out and meet people as an election process, if they want to run again, then they’ve got the ability and the right to do so. And so I backed him in, yes and I said he’s been a strong Member and a strong Deputy Premier.
I respect the position of Deputy Premier, I respect the position that he has as New South Wales Leader but I don’t think that those sorts of text messages should be shared with anybody other than perhaps the person you send them too and quite frankly, by what was written, they shouldn’t have been sent in the first place.
POPPY PENNY
Do you expect that he will be the candidate, come the by-election?
MICHAEL MCCORMACK
No. No, he’s pulled out and he went away at the weekend and said he was going to discuss it with his wife, Deanna and that’s what he did. And on Monday, when he withdrew his candidacy, he said that was the reason, family reasons. But I see he’s also given Andrew Constance a bit of a spray as well. So, you know, he’s blaming others. But he gave the family reasons as the excuse why he was not running and that’s what he said on Monday and you know, it was quite an emotional interview that he gave and you believe someone when they stand up and say that was the reason. But given the fact that he said that, that was the reason he gave and I understand that. I get that. Family has to come first in anything.
But it’s a little bit a long bow then to go and start blaming others for the reason why you’re not standing. And anybody, any party can run. I know Labor’s got a candidate. I know her. I’ve spoken to her during the fires. Everything there was above politics and that’s what I think people need to concentrate on. They don’t want to hear politicians arguing amongst themselves. You know there’s a lot of people in the South Coast of New South Wales who are living in tents and they’ve had their houses burnt down. They want to know that we’re standing up for them.
People who are still feeling the effects of drought, they want to know that we’re doing the right thing by them. And there are a lot of businesses which have shut due to COVID-19 and rest assured they are my focus too. So that’s my focus. I think all politicians need to have that as their focus and not arguing amongst themselves because the public at large do not like it.
LEIGH RYAN
Now, very quickly, the Regional Australia Institute has put out a release earlier this week about the Regional Australia Council 2031 which you were able to launch the other day. Can you give us a bit of an insight into the Regional Australia Council?
MICHAEL MCCORMACK
Well, what it’s going to do, it’s going to get the brightest minds and those in corporate Australia, and have a vision and a plan to work towards this next 10 or 11 years to ensure that there are decentralisation processes. I know I spoke at length with Andrew Gee, my Decentralisation Nationals Minister yesterday about this very thing. We need to have a blue-sky vision for regional Australia and that’s building dams and I’m getting on with the job of doing that. That’s building better roads and better infrastructure and having a plan so that businesses in capital cities can look to regional Australia and let me tell you, if there’s one thing that COVID-19 has taught us, that is you can do anything from regional Australia and the number of Skyped teleconferences and telepresences that I’ve been on and so many others have been on in business too, they know that regional Australia’s best years are ahead of it. We’re proud of our past, we’re proud of what we’ve done in the resources and agriculture sector but we can really grow them. I know that the National Farmers Federation want to grow their sector by another $40 billion over the next 10 years.
Now the Regional Australia Institute which has been going for eight years, great little organisation, they want to expand too. They want to make sure that people know that regional Australia is the place to work, live and invest.
POPPY PENNY
Michael McCormack, Deputy Prime Minister and Member for the Riverina, thank you so much for your time this morning.
MICHAEL MCCORMACK
Thanks Poppy. Thanks Leigh.
LEIGH RYAN
Not a problem.