Prime Minister Scott Morrison spoke to 60 Minutes reporter Tom Steinfort while he was locked up in the Lodge

Tom Steinfort: Prime Minister, we appreciate your time. I’ve seen some photos of you in hotel quarantine. You’ve been on the bike. My brother’s in hotel quarantine at the moment, I dropped him off a bit of a care package of Tim Tams and beer. Have Jenny and the girls sent you through anything similar?

Prime Minister Scott Morrison: I must say, I’m very well looked after here and we’re basically running the whole show out of the Lodge at the moment, whether it’s this little makeshift studio we’ve pulled together or the way we’re holding cabinet meetings. But we’re talking each and every day.

Of course, I miss the girls and Jenny, as people would expect. I mean, that’s no different to everyone else in quarantine.

TS: If you were a teacher and had to write the report card for how Australians have dealt with the challenges of COVID-19, what mark would you be putting down on the paper?

PM: I’ll let others make that assessment. All I know is that when the world got hit by the meteorite of COVID-19, Australia fared better than many and most. That means there’s something special going on down here about how we do things and how we react as a people, with a stable government that I think has been provided across all levels.

TS: We’ve always called ourselves the lucky country, but it really does feel like more so than ever this year?

PM: We made our own luck on this. There is no rule book here. There was no, there was no guidebook to go to for any of us.

In those early months when the uncertainties were so significant and we were seeing on our screens the tragic images. I remember one vividly when I came home here one night, and I walked upstairs to the bedroom and Jenny was there and there was a news report from the UK, and it was walking through an emergency clinic in Italy and just watching people die of this awful virus right there before us and the chaos that was there.

These were real scenes, the mass graves in New York. In the UK, more people have died from this virus than the some 55,000 that were killed during the blitz. Those figures are just staggering.

TS: One of the disappointing elements of this year for a lot of people has been the almost rivalry between different states, this idea that perhaps we’re not all Australians in this together. Did you almost feel like a parent watching some of the kids fighting?

PM: The national cabinet has been a very important innovation for how the states and territories work together. Let’s not forget that Australia’s Federation has held up better than any other federation around the world.

Now that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been a disagreement. Of course, it’s the Commonwealth and the Federation. Disagreement goes hand in hand with the federation, of course there are going to be disagreements. That’s not the marker of whether it works or not, the outcome is the marker.

For me as a Prime Minister, it’s been about continually laying out what the marker is in front of us and moving us to the next decision and preparing for the next decision. And that marker is getting us open by Christmas. We’re on target to hit that despite the hiccup we had in South Australia. Queensland’s opening up, Victoria is opening up. This is great news, and this is what I believe would happen as we just continued to forge forward to that goal. I just never take my eye off that goal.

TS: Speaking of timelines, let’s get to the important one. The great white hope is a vaccine. When do you think we’ll be getting it?

PM: Great news. All the four vaccines that we’ve invested in are all proving to be right on track in terms of being effective. So, we’re getting ourselves ready to have those distributed from the first quarter of next year.

I want to assure Australians about this, the vaccines that are made available to Australians, and we’ve committed around three and a half billion dollars to make sure we have these four vaccines. We can vaccinate the Australian population many times over, and we’ll also be able to support our Pacific Island family and countries in Southeast Asia as well.

They must be safe. There will be no compromises on safety and on health. That vaccine has to be good enough for me and my family for it to be good enough for everybody else and their families, too.