TANYA PLIBERSEK MP
SHADOW MINISTER FOR EDUCATION
SHADOW MINISTER FOR WOMEN
MEMBER FOR SYDNEY
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC RN DRIVE WITH PAUL BARCLAY
MONDAY, 27 SEPTEMBER 2021
SUBJECTS: Glasgow Climate Change Summit; Covid vaccinations and the vaccination rollout; Easing of restrictions in New South Wales; Students returning to school; Respect@Work report.
PAUL BARCLAY, HOST: Prime Minister Scott Morrison says he's yet to decide whether he'll attend the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow in November. The talks are seen as the most important climate meeting since 2015. Australia is under pressure to commit to net zero carbon emissions by 2050, but some in the National Party are staunchly against that. Foreign Minister Marise Payne told AM the government is still working on who represent Australia in Glasgow.
*Audio*
BARCLAY: Tanya Plibersek is the Shadow Education Minister. Welcome back to RN Drive.
TANYA PLIBERSEK, SHADOW MINISTER FOR EDUCATION & SHADOW MINISTER FOR WOMEN: Always a pleasure, Paul.
BARCLAY: The Foreign Minister says Australia will be strongly represented at the climate meetings in Glasgow, but we don't know who will be going. Should the Prime Minister be expected to attend the Glasgow conference?
PLIBERSEK: Look it's important who attends. But what's more important is having a strong target for reducing carbon dioxide pollution that we can commit to at those talks, and of course, that's still up in the air now. We've got division in the National Party, division in the Liberal Party, announcements but no real clear way forward to zero net emissions by 2050.
BARCLAY: Yes, the issue of signing up is a topic, obviously, of long-term friction within the Party room of the Nats. What about on the Labor side? You say the government should sign up. Are you prepared to go any further than that bottom line figure?
PLIBERSEK: Well, we've said very clearly and all the way along that we're committed to zero net emissions by 2050 and that we will have an announcement about interim targets that would get us to zero net emissions by 2050. We know that cheaper, cleaner renewable energy can power Australian jobs, power Australian households and is good for the environment. We can be a renewable energy superpower exporting renewable energy to the region as well. I mean there's so much in here for Australia, if only we get our skates on and it's particularly, it's particularly frustrating because the National Farmers Federation, some of our big energy companies, big companies like Qantas, state governments - all of them are prepared to say that they will get to zero net emissions by 2050. It's only the federal government that won't and it's not a good look for Australia.
BARCLAY: Just on the New South Wales roadmap out of lockdown, unvaccinated people will remain under the current restrictions until December, while vaccinated residents will be able to attend restaurants, gyms, hairdressers from October 11. Do you support the opening up of restaurants, gyms, hairdressers for the vaccinated from October 11?
PLIBERSEK: Look, I can tell you as someone who's been in lockdown for what seems like an eternity, I can't wait to get my life a bit more back to normal. I am very much looking forward to the businesses in my electorate being able to reopen in a safe sort of way. A lot of them have been really struggling, I know people who work in my electorate in areas like hospitality and retail, tourism, that have been hit hard a very keen to get back to work. We do need to know that our health system can cope with reopening with case numbers going to our hospitals, but honestly, I think the residents of Sydney and New South Wales are super keen to get life back to something a bit more like normal as soon as we safely can.
BARCLAY: So are you basically saying that you think the New South Wales government has got this right, this time table?
PLIBERSEK: Look, as an Opposition we don't have any access to all of the information that a government has access to, but I can tell you that we are keen for things to open up as soon as they safely can and we certainly want to see progress, particularly for people who are vaccinated. That relies on people having access to vaccines, and we know that there are still parts of New South Wales where people would like to get vaccinated where they're struggling to get an appointment to get the vaccine. So yes, we want to see things opening up as soon as they safely can. We need to make sure that those vaccines are available and that our health system can cope with the reopening.
BARCLAY: Yeah so just on that, unvaccinated residents will remain under stay-at-home restrictions for a further two months after that, October 11 date. I note that some people in the disability community are saying that they've been unable to get vaccines as quickly as they would like. I mean, is that a fair policy as it stands and a further two month wait for those people who haven't been vaccinated?
PLIBERSEK: I think the better way of asking the question is what can we do to speed up access to vaccines for populations that have struggled to get vaccinated? So that would apply, as you say, to some people in the disability community, but also in some regional parts of New South Wales. We continue to hear stories about people struggling to get an appointment, particularly for a Pfizer shot. So it is up to the government if they're going to place these restrictions on communities to make sure that people have the option to get vaccinated as soon as possible.
BARCLAY: Yeah. I mean these are difficult sort of calibration exercises. Regional travel will now be allowed after the 80 per cent benchmark is reached instead of 70 per cent. You've got some epidemiologists welcoming that delay. Is that enough time to allow vaccination rates in the regions to reach closer to those vaccination rates in Sydney?
PLIBERSEK: I hope so. I don't have access to the sort of detailed data by local government area that the NSW Government would have. But it is really important that we do not export the COVID virus into areas where it's not currently in the community. We need to make sure that communities are well vaccinated to protect people from that.
BARCLAY: Yeah, I mean, one of the things I say - I think often being in Victoria being under this long lockdown here is the one thing I must say that I feel grateful for is that my kids have grown up and that I'm not having to homeschool them. School kids of course are continuing to have to be taught from home. Recent reports showing disadvantaged kids are missing out on more hours of learning than their more affluent peers. This is particularly difficult. Should returning kids to the classroom be prioritised over the opening up of cafes and gyms?
PLIBERSEK: We need to get the kids back to school as soon as we possibly can because they really are missing out on a lot. Particularly the littlest kids, those kids up to the age of eight where they're really learning those fundamentals of education. Those little kindy kids, Year 1 - it's not easy for them to sit in front of a computer and do their lessons remotely, even if they've got a lot of parental help.
The other kids I'm really worried about are those in Year 12 doing their final exams this year. They've had a disrupted Year 11, disrupted Year 12 - they're not going to have a gap year next year. It's very unlikely that they'll be travelling internationally, any of those plans are certainly on hold. So I wrote to the Education Minister, the Federal Education Minister a while ago and said we need a 'Year 12 guarantee' for those kids - more places at Uni and TAFE, more help finding a job, and we need catch up help for those little kids, the ones who are missing out. We also need more mental health support, the social and emotional wellbeing of this generation of kids has really been impacted by COVID. They haven't just missed out on what happens in the classroom. They've missed out on what happens in the playground. They've missed out on school formals and camps and excursions and birthday parties and just hanging out with their mates.
BARCLAY: Do we have data on how much learning has been disrupted and adversely affected by the lockdown? And is this being tracked at a federal level?
PLIBERSEK: The Federal Government set aside $25 million to help with catch up in last year's budget and they've only spent $1 million of that. So we know that states like Victoria and New South Wales have actually invested in small group tutoring to help kids that have fallen behind. We don't know the full impact. We do have some early information, but I don't think will will know the full impact for a while.
BARCLAY: Just on the Respect@Work issue. You, today, called out as 'woefully inadequate' the budget for a website to help workplaces tackle sexual harassment, the indicative budget for the program is $70,000 to $120,000 - much less than what the government spent on the page featuring, you know, controversial milkshake consent ads. How much should be on the table for this?
PLIBERSEK: I think anybody who's ever run a website and the support behind it, where you're actually having to answer questions from people who come to you for information - employers and employees alike - would know that $70,000 isn't nearly enough and it really pales in comparison to the $3.5 million that the government spent on the just frankly weird milkshake and taco ads that they did for consent education. I think experts would tell you that would certainly need substantially more than the government's set aside for this website. This is one of the recommendations of the Sex Discrimination Commissioner's Respect@Work report that had 55 recommendations, and like everything with this report. the government says that it accepted the recommendation, but it's been completely half-hearted and frankly half-arsed in implementing it.
BARCLAY: Tanya Plibersek, thanks for your time.
PLIBERSEK: Pleasure Paul, thank you.
ENDS
