Interview with Macca, Australia All Over
26 April 2020
MACCA: Good morning, Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
PRIME MINISTER: G’day, Macca, how are you mate?
MACCA: Mate, I’m alright. Had a busy morning here, it’s always. It's been a different time for us in COVID because everybody seems to be home and they're all ringing. We just have our work cut out, just answering the calls. Prime Minister, you had a busy day yesterday, but not busy in the normal way. I saw your speech, I read your speech. It was very good and a speech for the times, really, wasn't it?
PRIME MINISTER: Oh, well, thank you. But look, it was a great honour and a privilege to be at the War Memorial yesterday. And it was very different. Normally, there'd be 30,000 people there yesterday. But I thought yesterday right across the country and the way people responded and found ways to remember, to honour, to reflect but most importantly, to draw the inspiration that I know everybody needs to draw at the moment. People in rural Australia have been drawing inspiration for a long time. They've been going through hardship with the drought and then after that, the bushfires. But so they know all about that and I think it was a much-needed injection of the Anzac spirit to have us all reflect on that yesterday and I think the way Australians responded was beautiful.
MACCA: So do I. And we've got, you know, although I don't know about playing the bagpipes at 5.30am in the morning in your local street. But that happened that in a few places.
PRIME MINISTER: I had heard that story.
MACCA: But anyway, my mum played the bagpipes and my father played the trombone and he was always ribbing her, you know, because the bagpipes didn't rate the brass players, brass players are proper musicians. And anyway, it was, look, we should talk about all sorts of things, really. And people are talking about exit strategies and what the new normal be and what will look like. And especially for older people, I've got a sister who's got asthma and so she's on her own, which is good. And we talk over the fence and we, but probably going onwards, they won't be able to really get around in the ways they used to, will they?
PRIME MINISTER: That will be the hardest area. We're definitely on the road back now. We've reopened elective surgery. The schools are coming back in much, much better ways than when they were going into the break and that's great. It won't be long before we'll see, I think, more businesses opened up again and we'll try and get back to some type of normal. But until there's obviously a vaccine, then things like the social distancing and, particularly, everyone being very conscious of their hand hygiene and all of these sorts of things. That will have to become instinctive and for those who are most vulnerable in our community and they're those who have other respiratory type issues, the elderly, those who are like Willie who I was talking about yesterday, who's on chemo and, you know, they will always be in a more sensitive place will have to be very careful for them going forward. That's why all around the world, I mean, one of the most common issues that I discuss with leaders around the world is finding this vaccine. And everybody is, you know, there's never been, I think, more effort going into finding a vaccine than for this virus. And so we're hopeful that that might mean that we'll get a breakthrough earlier than might otherwise be the case.
MACCA: The schools, why aren’t kids back at school? It seems to me just reading all the bits and pieces about it, that the kids maybe should be back in school, I think, and especially for kids who come from homes that aren't as, you know, favourable as yours or mine was. School is the best place, isn’t it?
PRIME MINISTER: That is the medical advice. It's also the advice of educationalists as well in terms of where's the best place for a child to learn. And there needs to be some changes made in the schools to protect teachers. But as I've said many times, their risk is in the staff room, not the classroom. The evidence is pretty clear that the transmission between children amongst very young ages is very, very low. And so like any other workplace, whether it be mine, yours or anywhere else where you're going to work, you've got to observe those distances. I've got a big sign outside my office door about how many people can be in there at any one time and there's a bottle of hand sanitiser in the office and out of it and all that. That's just the stuff you've got to do now. Now, if you do that and you manage to pick up and drops off well and ensure the distancing is done there, I mean, yes, kids need to get back. And that's a big part of the road back, I think, getting schools as much back to normal as we possibly can and it's great to see that's happening in South Australia, Western Australia, it’s already happening up in the Territory. And I have no doubt that in time we'll see that happen in the larger states as well.
MACCA: Speaking about your office and hand sanitisers, I've been thinking about what you do and because I see you every other day and with Mr Murphy, the Chief Medical Officer, and you're doing things. How's your day? I mean, are you sleeping, because you're doing stuff all the time and you're trying to get, you know, all the detail on board. And I mean, I'm glad you’re 50 and not 78 like Mr Biden, who's going to maybe be the President. You know, I mean, I just don't think he's going to cope with it. I mean, you've got to be young and on top of it and you obviously are a lot younger than he and I just... my mind boggles when I think of the things you've got to do and you get up and have breakfast and you got a briefing and then another briefing. And I mean, it must be this whole experience for you, Prime Minister, must have…. I mean, you just look back and I mean, do you get time to sit down and read the paper or just think about what you've been doing for the last month or two?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, you do, and it's important that you do because you’ve got to remain sharp and you try and keep a regime up. You get a bit of exercise, make sure you're seeing the family as I do, they’re with me here in Canberra. And you've got to have those times and I’ll have a bit of that time today as well, which is important. I've actually, in that spare time, I've been reading about good old Joseph Lyons from many years ago and just finished a great book on Joseph Lyons. He was going through very similar times back there in the Depression.
MACCA: And Dame Enid, wasn’t it, his wife?
PRIME MINISTER: These were very different times. There were many things that this time round we were in a much better position to deal with this. Certainly economically we were much stronger. And also the fact that all the states and territories are working together. They give me a great deal of support, of course, in their own roles as leaders in their own states and we've kept together as a Federation, I think, through this better than any other time dealing with a national crisis of this nature. But, you know, look, you keep your pace. It is a busy day. I mean, there are a lot of people out there working busy jobs and whether they be in the health system or in supermarkets or wherever they happen to be. But it is a constant stream of making decisions each and every day. And you've got to put yourself in the best private frame of mind to make the best possible ones, get the best advice. But at the end of the day, you've got to make the calls and you've got to take responsibility for them.
MACCA: And let's hope, I hope certainly, that there's after this we get... what’s the date, basically, when you think we'll start to ease things? You said sometime in May?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, we already are easing things, I'd stress that first. The National Cabinet just under three weeks from now has set a date to review what we call these baseline restrictions. And that is, you know, when we put in place all those businesses that had to close their doors. That is going to be reviewed formally and a decision taken within the next three weeks. And if it is able to be done sooner than that or if the evidence and on the basis of the medical evidence, then certainly we would do that. But we're already seeing a lot of states and territories who went a bit harder than those baselines now starting to pull that back and considering some changes. We're seeing that in pretty much all the states, particularly now in New South Wales, we're seeing a bit more there. And I look forward to seeing more of that, because the health effect of this is devastating, of course. And we've been very successful in avoiding the horror show that we've seen in other parts of the world and we can't be complacent about that, even still. I mean, the figure that totally just does my head in is the fact that France has a death rate 100 times greater than Australia and in the UK, it's almost 100 times greater. Now, we're talking about serious, developed economies with good health systems. And so, you know, none of us can be complacent about it. So, yeah, look mate, it is a factor of just staying on top of that. But we need to get our economy back. We need to get livelihoods. I've said it the whole time, this is about saving lives and saving livelihoods. JobKeeper and JobSeeker is there, but it's not intended to be there as a permanent measure. It's to help get us through the worst of this. And we all need to work to getting on the other side where that level of support will no longer be necessary because we'll have our economy up and running. And I want to get back to that as soon as we can.
MACCA: You know, I always say, you know, because I'm a musician. And if you ever think you've got nothing to do, go and pick up your instrument and try and play it, because there's always lots of things to do. We had a call this morning from a vet and he was talking about mental health problems of vets. And, you know, and everybody's talked about this time of isolation and things like that and health problems just incredible. That's the other thing of this, isn't it, as well as the economy, it is the mental health because it seems to be.
PRIME MINISTER: Yeah it is and we early on put in a very big package to support, financial package, to support increased mental health support and many of the lessons that we're putting in place here, Macca, we learned through working through the drought and the supports we know are so necessary. And as people in rural areas, in the farming communities are going through such hardship, not just for a few months, but for years and years and years and years. And I know for many that is still the case. The one point, one of the good days I’ve had in the last few months is when I was starting to see some of those… I had the Bureau of Meteorology come in and see me earlier this year and they gave me a much more optimistic outlook than I'd seen for a long time on that front. And so that was very welcome news and the fact that we hopefully will see some winter crops go in. That's fantastic. Michael McCormack and I are so thrilled about that. But that meant we had to make sure we get the workers there to ensure that that work could be done and we need to make sure they get the loans from the banks and various other things so they get those crops in. I think the rural community is going to play a big role with our recovery, a really big role. And David Littleproud and together with Michael McCormick and I, we’re doing a lot of work to see how we can ensure that they realise that. Shane Stone, of course, with the Drought Recovery Agency, they're continuing to do their work and each and every day.
MACCA: Yeah, there's lots of things to talk about. We haven’t got time. But a couple of things. I know the contact app is something that you're pretty keen about. And what's your hope with that?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, it's another tool that we need so we can get back to normal as much as we possibly can. There are three things you can do to help you, well, someone described it the other day as dancing with the virus, because it's still going to be there until there's a vaccine. And you need comprehensive testing, which we have the best testing regimes in the world, and that's been ramped up even further now to about 40,000-50,000 tests a day. That means if there is an outbreak, when you're going back to more normal activity, you can get onto it quickly. And then you've got to be able to lock it down and that's why you need what's called tracing when someone gets the coronavirus. What normally happens, if you would just indulge me for a second, if someone gets the coronavirus, the health agency in the state gets in touch with that person and they say, I need to know who you were in contact with over these periods when you were infectious and that could be prior to them getting symptoms. And that person has got to go back and think about all the people they may have been in contact with. Now, in many cases they might not have even known those people. They just might have been at the supermarket or they might have been out…
MACCA: The coffee shop.
PRIME MINISTER: The shop or wherever. Now, what the contact tracing app does, all it does is, is in that period for which you would have been potentially passing it on to others, it has what's called a Bluetooth handshake. So it doesn't know where you've been, where you might have been visiting or what shops you're at or what towns you're in or anything like that. It doesn't know any of that. All it knows is the other phones that you came in contact with and that information only gets downloaded when someone gets the coronavirus and then that person who has it enables it to be downloaded to that health officer. So what it's doing is it's helping the health officer do their job rather than relying on all of our memories. And the quicker they do their job, then the faster they can get in contact with people who may have been exposed to it, who then have that information, and then they can go straight into isolation, stay away from elderly relatives or others and that's how it saves lives. So it's just about helping these health officers do their job. No other government agency can get in touch, can't use this information. No one in the Commonwealth Government at all. And in state authorities, only the health officer can use it. Not the police, not the welfare people, nowhere else. Just the health officer. It’s a tool for them.
MACCA: Prime Minister, just tell me quickly about a good mate of mine, Frankie Misson, used to play for Australia Cricket. His wife is in care and he can't visit her. That's a bit of a shame, isn't it?
PRIME MINISTER: Is it. I've been disappointed about this and there was a meeting on Friday night. I'll get the report on that when we sit down again on Monday. But what I'm keen to do is ensure that people living in aged care facilities get their visits. Now, that doesn't mean they can have 100 visitors a day. Of course not. That would be dangerous. But there can be two visits a day and particularly by loved ones and close support people and that should be the norm. Now, if there's an outbreak in a centre like we've seen in Newmarch and a few other places then, of course, you’ve got to lock that down and you've got to prevent people coming in because that's a serious health risk. But otherwise, the health advice is it is safe. It is safe for people to have those visits that they've been having. You just can't have a lot of them. And the other part of it is, Macca, is you can't go and lock these people up in their rooms all day. That’s not Ok. You've got to be able to move around in the facility and sit in the common area or sit outside. I'm concerned about their wellbeing, both the physical and the mental wellbeing of people in aged care facilities. They can't be closed off from the public and become secret places. They need to be, have those visits and families need to know how their family members are doing and be able to provide them with that support.
MACCA: Same with the disabled, too. Look, Prime Minister, we've got to go. But nice to talk to you. It's interesting, I think, about the floods and the drought and the bushfires and then the floods and now the COVID. We're all doing it tough, including you. More power to your arm, I hope you do well because you're doing it for us, hopefully.
PRIME MINISTER: Well, thanks, Macca, thanks for having me on, all the best to everyone. Thanks to Australia for all you're doing to keep us all safe, to save lives and to save livelihoods. We appreciate that all and I'm sure we took great inspiration from our diggers yesterday. And thank you for the way you remembered them also.
MACCA: Good on you, Scott. Thank you. Bye. The Prime Minister, Scott Morrison.
