TANYA PLIBERSEK MP
SHADOW MINISTER FOR EDUCATION
SHADOW MINISTER FOR WOMEN
MEMBER FOR SYDNEY
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
4BC DRIVE WITH SCOTT EMERSON
WEDNESDAY, 18 AUGUST 2021
SUBJECTS: COVID; Afghanistan.
SCOTT EMERSON, HOST: And I'm always joined now by the Shadow Minister for Education, Shadow Minister for Women, Tanya Plibersek. And I feel like a broken record here, Tanya, but really I have to say, are you okay? Those numbers today in New South Wales are just terribly grim.
TANYA PLIBERSEK, SHADOW MINISTER FOR EDUCATION, SHADOW MINISTER FOR WOMEN: Yeah, it's really hard. It's really hard on my constituents, all the people of New South Wales who are now – I think it's the seventh week of lockdown for a lot of us, and homeschooling, remote learning, working from home, all of that's hard. But I've got to say, I really feel for the people who are living on their own. And I've been contacted by so many of my local businesses Scott, who - one person's paying $10,000 a month rent, and the landlord doesn't want to give them a discount at a time like this - the CBD is a ghost town. It's a really tough time. And people who have built up their businesses over 10, 20, 30 years, not doing anything wrong, they've done everything right - and they're facing losing all that hard work. It's heartbreaking actually. It's really just heartbreaking.
EMERSON: I can imagine how difficult it may be. We haven't really had that situation here in Queensland, but even the short lockdowns - I know the feedback we get here from businesses, from people who have to home-school. So I can't imagine it going for so long, and to see those numbers keep going up and up and up with no real end in sight. But I do look at what's happened in New South Wales, and I wonder about the nature of the lockdown. Because I did see those scenes at the weekend from Bondi Beach where people seem to be out there again, I couldn't work out what kind of lockdown Sydney is having. It did seem to be a very different lockdown from what happened in Melbourne, or even here in Queensland.
PLIBERSEK: Yeah, you are allowed out to exercise. You're allowed out in your own local government area or within 5km from a home if you're on the border of the local government area. But look, there's always some people who break the rules and some people who’ll push the boundaries. And to them I just say, think about what you're doing. Like, it's not what you can get away with. You actually have to think about how we protect and look after ourselves, the people closest to us, the people we love, and the whole community. A lot of this transmission is happening in people's homes - someone goes out to work, or someone goes out for some reason, picks up the virus, brings it home and gives it to the whole family. That's the real danger here. You might not be worried about your own health, but think about who you've got waiting at home for you that will potentially get sick because of something you've done. You'd never forgive yourself, would you?
EMERSON: No you wouldn't. Look, we can only hope that things improve in New South Wales, but looking at those numbers today - 633. There's still obviously a long way to go.
PLIBERSEK: It's not great.
EMERSON: It's not great at all. Let's talk about, again, the terrible scenes that are happening in Afghanistan with the Taliban now in control of Kabul. Again, distressing scenes coming out of there. Would Labor, have done anything different from what Scott Morrison has been doing?
PLIBERSEK: Well yeah, we would have got the people who helped our soldiers out sooner. And again, I believe a rescue flight has just taken off just in the last little while, so that's good. We're very happy that people are being evacuated. But for literally years now, Australian soldiers have been saying to the Australian government: “what are you doing to help the interpreter that helped me? That saved my life, that protected me?” Our soldiers have been calling on our government ,and Labor has been supporting them, saying for goodness sake these people risked their lives for our personnel, to keep them safe. We've got to look after them. That was that was the moral commitment we made to these people. And we know that there are ethnic and religious minorities there that will be persecuted. God knows what's going to happen to the women of Afghanistan and the girls of Afghanistan. So we could now, I think, very properly be looking at our humanitarian intake, refugees, we’re supposed to take 13,000 a year, or we've got a quota of 13,000 a year. We didn't anywhere near meet that last year, we won't this year. So we've got a little bit of room in our humanitarian intake. But let's start with those people who risked their lives helping our soldiers.
EMERSON: Peter Dutton was on the program earlier this week and I heard Scott Morrison today in his press conference. And both of them stressed the point that yes the situation is terrible out there, we do want to bring people here to Australia, but we've got to make sure that we do the proper checks. Isn't there a real danger that potentially, we do bring people out of Afghanistan that could pose a threat to us here in Australia?
PLIBERSEK: Yeah, we do have to do the proper checks. But like everything Scott Morrison does, it's coming way too late in the piece. They've been in government now for eight years. It is absurd to suggest that this process is somehow starting now or we didn't see any of this coming. Our people who served there, who risk their lives because their government asked them to go to Afghanistan and fight, they have been warning our government for years that we need to get the people who helped them here safely. This cannot have come as a surprise. This cannot have come as a surprise to the government. And yes, we need to do proper checks. I don't doubt that for a minute. But this, you know, too little too late, every single time from Scott Morrison. It's so disappointing. And it must be terrifying for the people who have personal relationships or family members there or our soldiers who had interpreters that they worked closely with, they would be, well, I know they are just beside themselves.
EMERSON: Alright Tanya Plibersek, always good to have you on the show, speak to you again next week.
ENDS
