TANYA PLIBERSEK MP
SHADOW MINISTER FOR EDUCATION AND TRAINING
MEMBER FOR SYDNEY

 

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TELEVISION INTERVIEW
TODAY SHOW
MONDAY, 2 NOVEMBER 2020

SUBJECTS: Labor’s election win in Queensland; Chris Hayes; ‘Upturn: A Better Normal After Covid-19’.
 
KARL STEFANOVIC, HOST: Welcome back to the show. It's been a huge weekend for the Labor Party hasn't it? Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk securing a third term in office and entering the history books as a legend of the ALP.
 
ALISON LANGDON, HOST: And Shadow Minister for Education and Training, Tanya Plibersek, joins us now in Sydney. Tanya, always lovely to chat. Were you expecting such a significant victory in Queensland? 
 
TANYA PLIBERSEK, SHADOW MINISTER FOR EDUCATION AND TRAINING: I was very nervous until the last minute and seeing the result coming through on Saturday night, it was very exciting – and a real tribute to Annastacia Palaszczuk, and her leadership, and her team. She's handled the health crisis well, she's got a plan for the future of the state, for jobs, for the economy, and it's a real tribute to her.
 
STEFANOVIC: You know, I guess that everyone's going to be asking the question then, given tourism and how bad it is for operators all the way along the coast from way up north to down south, when are the borders going to open? What are your thoughts on it? 
 
PLIBERSEK: Look I hope as soon as possible. We're doing so well as a nation now. We know that jobs depend on people being able to move around. I think a lot of people are looking forward to seeing family at Christmas. But like always we need to take the best health advice and, you know, fingers crossed I guess is all we can say.
 
LANGDON: Do you hope this idea of 28 days of no community transmission, that that is changed?
 
PLIBERSEK: Oh, look. I'm not a health expert. I think it's important that we listen to the health experts and I think Annastacia's win on Saturday night shows that the people of Queensland agree that she's kept them safe, she's kept him healthy and they're trusting her plan to rebuild the economy and rebuild jobs.
 
STEFANOVIC: Look, we all saw you leap into action too during an emergency in Parliament last week. Do you have any update on Chris Hayes at all? 
 
PLIBERSEK: Yeah. I spoke to him on Saturday and he's doing much better, obviously talking to his family after that incident. It was pretty scary to be honest - and so happy to know that Chris is doing much better. He's a very dear friend as well as being a colleague, so it was a shock being there, but I was so glad to be able to help and we were so lucky because we had Mike Freelander, who's one of my colleagues who is a doctor. He was in the room. We had another doctor, David Gillespie, who is now a Member of Parliament. He came rushing up. We had the ambulance there very quickly. The nurse was terrific. I mean everybody, everybody who looked after Chris that day was really good and I know he's very grateful to everyone who gave a hand.
 
LANGDON: Oh that is really good news to hear that Tanya that he is on the mend because it was scary. Really scary to watch that vision, but look, at how are you going by the way because you're pretty busy at the moment between parliamentary sittings, you've also managed to edit a book and in it you say that there's a better Covid economic recovery plan than Scott Morrison's. 
 
PLIBERSEK: Yeah. I think we've done incredibly well as a nation with Covid-19. We've done a whole lot of things we didn't think we're possible. The kids moved to online learning virtually overnight. We housed homeless people. We gave mortgage holidays and rent relief. We've done all these - we stayed home from the beach and the pub. Who would have thought you could get Australians to do that? We need to take that spirit into rebuilding after the health crisis, making sure that we come out of this with a fairer, stronger economy and society. So I've spoken to a bunch of really interesting people about their ideas on how to do that, and of course the proceeds go to charity as well, to homeless charities. So I hope people if they get the chance, buy the book and have a read before Christmas.
 
STEFANOVIC: You know, you've got some big names - the Today Show's Wayne Swan, Peter Garrett, Cate Blanchett, I mean, they're great names and interesting backgrounds. 
 
PLIBERSEK: Yeah, look it's really interesting because we've got the really famous people, like you say, Today Show's Wayne Swan and Peter and Cate, but we've also got Lachlan Beel, for example, who's an apprentice from Ipswich. We've got scientists. We've got doctors. We've got bankers. We've got Fiona Simson, head of the Farmers’ Federation, economists, academics. It's a really broad list of people. It's people that I respect, talking about how they think we should build back stronger.
 
LANGDON: Yeah well look and it's a great read. I still don't know how you found the time to get this together.
 
PLIBERSEK: Well I had to do something on a Saturday night during lockdown, right? 
 
LANGDON: Did it just take you one night? Well done.
 
PLIBERSEK: No, no.
 
STEFANOVIC: I don't know why you just didn't drink like us?
 
PLIBERSEK: Well there might have been a little bit of that too.
 
LANGDON: All right thank you Tanya and 'Upturn: A better normal after Covid-19' is available from all good book retailers now.
 
ENDS