TANYA PLIBERSEK MP
SHADOW MINISTER FOR EDUCATION
SHADOW MINISTER FOR WOMEN
MEMBER FOR SYDNEY
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
RADIO 7AD DEVONPORT THE HOME RUN WITH LEE DIXON
THURSDAY, 12 AUGUST 2021
SUBJECTS: Tasmania; Remote Parliament; Scott Morrison’s quarantine and vaccine rollout chaos; George Christensen; Altering images on social media.
LEE DIXON, HOST: Somebody that needs no introduction at all is Tanya Plibersek. Good afternoon, how are you?
TANYA PLIBERSEK, SHADOW MINISTER FOR EDUCATION, SHADOW MINISTER FOR WOMEN: Oh great to be with you Lee, I'm very well.
DIXON: Now, have you come from Question Time earlier today?
PLIBERSEK: Weirdly I am in Sydney, but I did go to Question Time remotely from my Electorate Office in Sydney. Sydney is in lockdown at the moment so I made the decision to stay in my electorate, rather than travelling to Canberra.
DIXON: Good on you.
PLIBERSEK: Oh well it's tough. I mean, Parliament still has to sit. We want Parliament to keep sitting if it's safe for Parliament to be sitting, it's important that it does so, but you know my electorate's doing it really tough at the moment. I wanted to be here with the people that I represent and share some of that with them.
DIXON: We're finding it really hard to kind of compare ourselves here in Tassie, because, you know, we're on a lucky streak at the moment aren't we?
PLIBERSEK: You've done so well in Tassie and my colleague, Julie Collins from Tasmania, was actually saying in Parliament today that although Tasmania has done fantastically well in keeping COVID-19 out, people are still feeling the economic impact of the virus, because of course there's all the tourists that can't make it, all those businesses that depend on the tourist dollar are still struggling.
DIXON: Speaking of Question Time, anything worth noting? And it's great to see you are setting an example, I mean the Government spent thousands, if not millions, of dollars on technology that allows remote conferencing. So did you take anything away from today?
PLIBERSEK: It was a really important day, we were asking the Prime Minister - what's he doing about the vaccination program and about quarantine, which is really the problem now isn't it? We keep getting COVID-19 back into the community because the quarantine system is not working and the vaccine rollout’s too slow.
DIXON: Without this being an attack forum or attack campaign, why is the Government failing us? Why is Scott Morrison not at the forefront? Why does it seem like he's taking a backseat here?
PLIBERSEK: It's just inexplicable. I mean Australians did so well at the beginning of this pandemic. We were great, we shut our international borders nice and early, which meant that we were able to control the virus a little bit better at the beginning. And you just gave the example of Tasmania, Tasmania has done fantastically well at keeping the virus out of Tasmania. What we're being let down on now is the quarantine. You can't keep using hotels that are built for tourists to try and look after people who are sick with a really highly contagious virus and not expect it to escape into the community. We've had about 27 escapes from hotel quarantine now. And the same thing with the vaccine rollout, we need more jabs in more people's arms, the more people that are vaccinated the sooner we can reopen and get things back, something more like normal. I just had my second dose of AstraZeneca a couple of weeks ago, but the sooner we get more of our population vaccinated the better. The Government should have had more deals for more jabs of Pfizer and the other vaccines, so that people could get them.
DIXON: Well, I don't really want to set the tone for this chat to be all about COVID-19 and the vaccine, but Barnaby Joyce is falling under this umbrella this afternoon when it comes to George Christensen's comments.
PLIBERSEK: Look, I really hesitate to talk about people like George Christensen because it's kind of doing what they want you to do, which is giving them lots of publicity for their fringe kind of views. But it is important that leaders like Barnaby Joyce, actually call out the mad misinformation that's being peddled by people like George Christensen. We need to keep ourselves, and our families, and our communities safe. Look after each other, wear masks, get vaccinated when you can do, all of the stuff that the health professionals are telling us. And when you've got people saying, ‘oh we should just do what the US is doing, we should just do what the UK is doing’ - the United States has had more than 600,000 deaths from COVID now. The UK has had more than 130,000 deaths. They had more deaths last month than Australia has had in this whole pandemic. So that's what letting it rip looks like. So when you got people saying, ‘we should just let it rip’, that's what they're talking about. Our leaders need to call that out.
DIXON: We'll see how that develops over the next few weeks. Stepping away from politics now, and journalist slams photo editing apps revealing dramatic transformation in seconds. Photoshop is everywhere. An influencer by the name of Danae Mercer has said that Photoshop is everywhere. She openly admits that she enhances her body when it comes to social media posts. Do you think that subtle photoshopping is dangerous for a younger generation on social media?
PLIBERSEK: Look, I think it's important that the kids who are spending hours on TikTok, Instagram, whatever, actually know that so much of this stuff is just not real. And there was one of these terrific social media influencers just saying, ‘this is what I do to my photos, this is what standardly social media influencers are doing to make themselves look better’. I think it's good that young people know that what they're looking at isn't real life.
DIXON: Do you think there's a large percentage of the population that are on those social media platforms that don't know that it's all kind of been played around with on Photoshop and are taking it seriously?
PLIBERSEK: Look like I certainly think the adults know that it's photoshopped, I hope the kids know. I hope the kids know because a lot of them are pretty young looking at this stuff and I don't think it's healthy if they imagine that, you know, real human beings are super skinny, super smooth and out there enjoying the Greek Islands all the time. It's good to know that this is, it's a fantasy, and as long as they take it with a bit of a grain of salt, I think it's much healthier.
DIXON: It's interesting because so many of them these days have the automatic enhance feature, where it makes your jowls look a bit skinnier and even the ones where it automatically turns you into a Disney character these days. We're kind of going into this really weird realm, aren't we?
PLIBERSEK: Well, Lee, I'm telling you, if there is an automatic enhance on a meeting function that I've got online, I’m turning it on for sure. I just don't want the 10 year olds out there thinking that that's what they should be aspiring to.
DIXON: You know, when you say that age group, 10 year olds, that's probably where parents should probably step in as well and kind of have a bit of a chat and say look, you know what, here's how it really happens behind the scenes.
PLIBERSEK: Yeah. Absolutely. Those conversations are really important to have and I think it's pretty hard convincing the kids not to look at this stuff at all. Looking at it with a clear notion that it's fantasy. It's not real life. I think that makes it a bit safer.
DIXON: Right party note, our convo started today after having a chat with some staff members here at the radio station earlier this week, we found that there's one particular staff member that doesn't go to bed till 1-1:30 in the morning every night. And that kind of got us going hang on, hang on, we need to find out what the average going to bed time is here, do our own little Census question that wasn't on Census form this week. So what time does Tanya Plibersek hit the hay at night time, most nights?
PLIBERSEK: 10.30. I try, I aim for 10:30 and mostly I'm in bed by 10:30.
DIXON: Right. And then you're up on your feet by what time in the morning?
PLIBERSEK: I go for a walk at 6 am.
DIXON: Right.
PLIBERSEK: I try to do that every day, and I find that starts me off the right way. I get a bit of fresh air, a bit of exercise in the morning - I'm a much nicer person after that.
DIXON: Well judging by the calls and comments that are coming in today, 10:30 seems to be reasonably respectable amongst the northwest coast. So it's good to see that you're on par there as well Tanya.
PLIBERSEK: I'm almost a nanna, I really am.
DIXON: We appreciate your time this evening. Cheers for joining us on The Home Run, hopefully we can make this more of a regular catch up.
PLIBERSEK: Look forward to it. Thanks Lee.
DIXON: Good on you. Tanya Plibersek on The Home Run.
ENDS
