E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TELEVISION INTERVIEW
ABC NEWS AFTERNOON LIVE
MONDAY, 20 APRIL 2020

SUBJECTS: Coronavirus tracing app; Virgin Australia; Malcolm Turnbull’s book, China.

PATRICIA KARVELAS, HOST: I want to bring in my panel, Liberal Senator Eric Abetz and Labor’s Stephen Jones, he’s the Shadow Assistant Treasurer. Welcome to both of you. I’ll start with you Eric Abetz, will you download the tracing app?

SENATOR ERIC ABETZ: Instinctively I’ve got issues with a concept such as a government tracing app. That said, I am pleased that it’s going to be voluntary, that it’s got a sunset clause and that there will be restrictions placed on it. To me it’s a work in progress and I’ll have a look at the exact details of it. I can understand why the Government is doing it but instinctively it is not something that I would want to see in the normal course of events but I accept that we are not in the normal course of events. For me, it’s wait and see and look for further details.

KARVELAS: Okay, so you’re going to be looking at the detail before you commit to signing up to it. What are you worried about?

ABETZ: Well, I believe that, as a Liberal, in privacy and as result when government seeks to have these sorts of controlling mechanisms on its society I think that ought be a matter of great concern. That said, I fully understand the reasons why it’s being done for a short period and that’s why I’m still balancing up these things in my mind.

KARVELAS: What do you make of some of your colleague’s, Barnaby Joyce Barnaby Joyce, for instance ruling out downloading this app? I mean, is that helpful when the Government is obviously rolling out a national public health project here, unprecedented national public health project for members of the Government to be undermining such a measure before it even starts.

ABETZ: Barnaby's entitled to his views and has always expressed them Very forthrightly. I think I might be somewhat different to Barnaby in as much as I like to look at things very carefully and in detail prior to making a determination, but like Barnaby, I'm instinctively opposed to these sorts of things, but then I do have to weigh up on the other side the potential public benefit and the health benefit of it and that's what I'll be weighing up in my own mind.

KARVELAS: Stephen Jones, how about you, will you be downloading the app?

STEPHEN JONES, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: I probably would, but I’ve got to say when you're launching a public health initiative like this, the number one task is ensuring that you get public confidence and you get the basics right. All of these questions that Barnaby Joyce is raising, that Eric Abetz is raising, and seems the majority of the Liberal backbench is raising, are obvious questions that could have been predicted well in advance now. I understand Stuart Robert has been charged with implementing this new arrangement. Frankly, this is just the last in a long series of bungles from Stuart Robert. We need to get this right, because if this works properly, this can help us relax a bunch of the other restrictions that are in place at the moment and get some of the economic activity moving again as we needed to. All the more reason why the Government should have got the communications, right and have been able to answer a whole bunch of those questions a lot earlier than they have been able to.

KARVELAS: Eric Abetz, let me ask my question because I really have something quite specific to ask you. We spoke to an economist before, one of the economists behind this open letter to the Prime Minister saying do not rush to reopen the economy, but I know elements of business say well it's time now, what's your view on this? Would you like to see the economy reopen?

ABETZ: Of course, I think everybody would love to see the economy reopen but not at the cost of lives. And so when you've got two economists you usually end up with three opinions. What a Government needs to do is weigh up all these matters, as might I add with this tracing app, and it was quite proper for the Government to indicate what its intention was and then to hear some of the feedback and then moderate and change thing to ensure that it gets as much public support as possible and so that's what happens in cases such as this. Look do we want growth than the economy? Of course we do, every job is vital to people’s mental health, their physical health, for the economy, for the future of our kids because they will be burdened with a debt like never before after this and we owe it to them to try to minimise that debt burden as much as possible. But we also have to protect each and every human life because every life matters and I think in Australia the Prime Minister and the National Cabinet has been doing an excellent job.

KARVELAS: Stephen, the Financial Review is reporting that Virgin Australia is expected to go into administration after the board meets tonight to decide the company's future. Pretty significant news if that happens. Should the Government have granted the airlines request for a 1.4 billion dollar emergency loan?

JONES: This will be an unmitigated disaster. The Government has seen this coming for some time. It is in the interest of those 14,000 workers, 14,000 Virgin employees that the Government step in and provide, on commercial terms, a line of credit. It is in the interest of the Australian consumer that we have two airlines operating after this crisis has passed. We all have memories of what it was like to travel in Australia and what to what it was like to travel internationally before we had competitive airlines in this country. We were paying two, three, sometimes four times as much as we are today to get a domestic airline ticket. That's what competition means. That's what having a viable second airline in the economy means. For those who are saying, well, it doesn't matter we can dispense with those 14,000 workers because their jobs seemingly aren't that important and that we can just wait for another carrier to come along and start operating in the Australian roots, we could be waiting years for that to happen. And this will all be done on the Government's watch. 

KARVELAS: Eric Abetz, this report that Virgin Australia is expected to go into administration. are you concerned? 

ABETZ: Of course I am but look, let's be clear, Stephen has a record of just no matter what the Government says, it’s wrong, so if the Prime Minister could walk on water, Stephen Jones would be issuing a press release saying the Prime Minister can’t swim.

JONES: That’s not true.

KARVELAS: I understand the political point, but yes, do you think they should be saved?

ABETZ: In relation to Virgin, if as Stephen Jones says, the Government should provide a loan on commercial terms, well if it’s on commercial terms why isn’t the commercial market providing that loan and facility to Virgin. It is clear that it will not be if such a deal was to be done. It could not and would not be on commercial terms because the private sector, the commercial sector is not willing to bankroll , it would appear. But look that said let's take this step by step, the Government has already made monies available to Virgin and Qantas to enable them to continue to fly certain routes and of course the Government would want to see competition in the skies. And that is something that the Government is committed ensuring.

KARVELAS: Just to nail down your view on this, you think the Government shouldn't step in and should be prepared for, even if you don't welcome it, for Virgin to go into administration this evening?

ABETZ: What I'm saying is that you take these things step by step. I heard Qantas, some years ago, telling us that unless the Government were to bail them out they would have all sorts of consequences. Well Qantas got themselves out of it. Similarly, we heard with this SPC in Shepparton that if government didn't bail them out, they would have to close. Government didn't and the factory and the manufacturer continue. So were you've got to be careful with the way you play these things and not broadcast your punches in advance or your negotiating position in advance, because if you do so you lose all capacity to negotiate and that is where a little bit of the commercial smarts is vital in relation to these dealings with big companies, that are dealing in billions of dollars, that are associated in Virgin’s case with of course, Richard Branson who’s on his island with his billions of dollars with the Chinese Airline, that's a 10% stakeholder Virgin Australia safe. Let's be clear that we dealing with some big players and of the easy solutions the Stephen Jones’ of this world are not quite as easy as might be suggested.

KARVELAS: Stephen Jones, really a quick reply on that.

JONES: I could accept all of that at face value had the Government not bailed out Rex, which meets all of those boxes that Senator Abetz has just ticked. Why is it okay to bail out Rex but not Virgin Australia, why are the customers of Rex and the workers of Rex more important than the 14,000 workers at Virgin Australia? This is a question that the Government's going to have to answer in the next couple of days. 

KARVELAS: Alright, Eric Aetz, I just want to end on this, you won't be surprised I'm going to go here, Malcolm Turnbull's memoir is out today, but a pirated copy has circulated over the weekend. Did you receive one of these copies? 

ABETZ: Look, I did and I deleted it.

KARVELAS: Did you? 

ABETZ: Yes, I did. 

KARVELAS: Didn't have a sneaky look?

ABETZ: I'm not going to say what happens to and from emails that I may or may not receive.

KARVELAS: You just confirmed you got it!

ABETZ: I obtained it last night and I deleted last night.

KARVEALAS: So, you got it last night, did have a little look before you delete it?

ABETZ: I deleted it. 

KARVELAS: But did you have a little look before you deleted it? 

ABETZ: Well, what I would say one nice thing about it is that it was dedicated to Lucy. 

JONES: That’s a yes.

KARVELAS: I think it’s a yes, you can say it wasn’t a yes if you want.

ABETZ: Look, Stephen Jones will spin anything and that's his style, that's Labor’s style. I'm not quite sure that is the right atmosphere at the moment within the Australian body politic that but it’s up to Labor how they play their game. My answer is there for the record there. Yes I did receive it, yes I did delete it.

KARVELAS: Are you going to buy a copy? 

ABETZ: I doubt it, no.

KARVELAS: Alright, fair enough. Thanks to both of you for joining me. I've got to ask you Stephen Jones before I let you go, only to be fair. Laobr is clearly enjoying making hay with this story too. Have you had a chance to read it?

JONES: I didn't know until Eric just told me that it was dedicated to Malcolm's wife Lucy. But look, I did receive a copy of the eBook, I haven’t read it yet, but I am going to go out and purchase it because I make it a practice to read the biographies, auto and otherwise, of every Australian Prime Minister from the Liberal Party or Labor Party, and before those two parties ever existed. I think it's an honour to the people who hold those positions that we inform themselves about their lives and what went on during their reign. 

KARVELAS: Okay, look just before we actually conclude the panel, we will be speaking to Cassandra Goldie from ACOSS in a moment about jobs, but Eric Abetz, it's just to ask you about this, you've been critical of China's handling of the coronavirus. What questions do you want the Chinese government to answer?

ABETZ: I want to know where did it emanate from? When were they first told by the own medical people that this was a problem? How did they deal with those people? What pressure did they put on the World Health Organization to come out with the sort of lines which have now been exposed as highly unprofessional, inaccurate, most unhelpful, which is caused this a pandemic to be worse than it actually is? Why would the World Health Organization, for example, call Australia out as doing the wrong thing when we stop flights coming in from China and the they're the sort of things that need to be answered and that China really does need to answer as well. How come they got their figures of their fatalities so wrong that after a bit of world pressure all of a sudden they up figures by about a thousand or so from Wuhan? These are always questions that need to be answered so that we can get a full insight as to what occurred and I think the communist dictatorship in China, and let's make this distinction, that's not the Chinese people, it’s the communist dictatorship in China that needs to answer these questions. 

KARVELAS: Alright. Thank you to both of you for a another lively panel. 

ENDS