Subjects: Ministerial Code of Contact breaches; cost of living pressures; Anthony Albanese’s broken $275 promise; renewable energy; the union movement.
PAUL MURRAY:
Thanks very much for watching, good chance for us to have a chat to the man who has been right on the games of this new government. They’re not serious about cost of living, in fact they told lies about it. They don’t care about transparency, they’re already covering things up. And he was right to say bugger off to that union talkfest. He’s been proven right every day since he became leader of the Liberal Party and he’s a reason to smile and why we fight.
Peter Dutton, nice to talk to you.
PETER DUTTON:
Thanks Paul, great to be on the show mate, thank you.
PAUL MURRAY:
So, cost of living is the main game, we’ll get to that in a second. But you know, this ‘oh so pure, better than all time – just ask them’ government; we know that slowly but surely, a whole bunch of Ministers who knew in July they had to get rid of shares – they haven’t done it. Now, this has sort of been bubbling for a while, but it couldn’t be clearer.
The Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus has a self-managed super fund. In it, shares that ended up being in a company that got a decision made and that thanked the government for the decision that they made. Now, that has to be the definition of out of control, failing the pub test. You’d think that the teals would be screaming, but everyone’s trying to cover this up?
PETER DUTTON:
Well Paul, I mean it’s clear cut as far as we’re concerned. If you have a look at the shareholdings, what’s happened, the direct link between his role as the Attorney-General, decisions he’s making that affect the company – it is a slam dunk as you say – and the fact is that the Prime Minister is running this protection racket for the Attorney-General at the moment. I mean, what does the Ministerial Code of Conduct actually mean if Mark Dreyfus stays in his job? It’s a direct conflict and the Attorney-General should go.
PAUL MURRAY:
Now, you know that every night I talk about cost of living, 88 per cent of Australians, it’s their number one concern. You were at a release of a report in Canberra this week that said it is now the number one thing people are bringing up when they are talking about potentially ending their own life. This government, every single day, all day every day when they were in opposition for months and months and months, were about cost of living. And then we were told, wait for the Budget, well we find out today, there’ll be nothing in the Budget. What does that say about, well frankly, the lie that they told people to get their vote?
PETER DUTTON:
Well Paul, the government’s in a honeymoon at the moment. You know, the left-wing media are willing their success every day and so they overlook these very real issues that you’re prepared to raise.
If you’re a family at the moment, you’re about to face 22 cents a litre extra for your fuel. That’s the decision of the Albanese Government. You listen to the Prime Minister before the election, when Anthony Albanese said that he would cut your power bill by $275, and a lot of people would have voted for him on that basis. Since the election, he’s never mentioned that figure of $275 again. If you look at what your grocery bill is going up by each week that you go to the checkout, if you have a look at your insurance premiums, if you look at your cost of living pressures otherwise, this government doesn’t have any answers and yet they promised before the election that they had a plan and it’s clear that they had no plan.
Now, they’re trying to water down expectation as to what will be in the Budget and clearly, they’re saying to Australians – as you point out – yeah, sure, you thought there was going to be help there for you, but it’s the complete opposite.
I think a lot of Australians are going to be feeling duped at the moment, that they voted for a government that they thought had an economic plan, they would make the right decisions, but Labor can never manage the budget. They can never manage the economy. They always make the wrong decisions, and Australians unfortunately will pay the price for it, and a lot of families as their mortgages go up, are going to find it very difficult to pay all those bills. Electricity prices under this government, clearly, are going to go through the roof and I really worry about families who are doing it tough and increasingly will face an uphill battle over the next couple of years.
PAUL MURRAY:
When we talked about that report and about the suicide prevention organisations that are reporting that back and 74 per cent of people that are calling them, are part of the mix, is cost of living. As I said, it knocked me on my ass a couple of days ago, but we have had hundreds of people reach out to explain that this is very real, it is very dire. We have now had every single month of this government – five in total this year – interest rate rises, and it looks like we’re going to get more; yet you have a government that sort of peacock around in Question Time, media generally trying to keep the new car smell. People are genuinely hurting right now and the idea that a government that pretended to be for them, is just going to get in the Comcar and leave them in their dust.
PETER DUTTON:
I think it’s unconscionable, and at the same time you’ve got the Attorney-General of the country with his listing of 20 different funds that his self-managed super fund is investing into and as we point out – one in particular – that raises very real concerns and the contempt that the Prime Minister’s showing toward the public, at the moment, I think it’s palpable. I think people see the hubris and see that they’re obviously excited, they’ve won the election, but I think the problem is that they’ve left people behind.
The rising interest rate is one issue for families to deal with, and certainly small businesses with overdrafts and credit facilities otherwise, but the energy issue is a huge one Paul. I mean if you look at what’s happened in Germany where they’re rationing power, in California at the moment they’re talking about rolling blackouts, in the United Kingdom you’re talking about families and pensioners who won’t be able to turn on their heating or their air conditioning during summer or winter. This is a very real consequence of this belief that you can just pump 100 per cent of renewables into the system, and somehow make believe that that’s going to keep the lights on at nighttime. It’s just inconceivable, it’s against science, common sense and yet you’ve got Chris Bowen parading around at the moment, spruiking the fact that their investment in renewables is going up. Well, they’re not firming and if they don’t firm, the lights don’t stay on at the nighttime.
I very much worry that our country – maybe not this year, maybe not next – but over the next few years we are going to see under the Labor government, not just an increase in power prices, but also an uncertainty around the reliability of our energy and gas supply. I’ll tell you what that means for a lot of manufacturing businesses, they say, ‘well, we’re not going to stay in Australia, we’re going to take those manufacturing jobs offshore.’ There’s no net benefit to the to the environment, probably a worse environmental outcome, and we lose the benefit of those jobs in Australia. We lose the benefit of that economic multiplier here.
I think the Prime Minister is digging himself into all sorts of difficult holes and of course he’s now seeded enormous power across to the union movement, which again is going to be very difficult for small businesses to negotiate.
PAUL MURRAY:
Absolutely. Peter Dutton is a straight shooter and his aim is good. This guy is going to go very well and fight for people like you.
[ends]