Subjects: Labor’s superannuation shambles; cost of living pressures; the government’s broken promise on a $275 cut to your power bills; cyber security; visiting Bundaberg.
E&OE
DANIEL BREWER:
Mr Dutton, good morning.
PETER DUTTON:
Good morning Daniel.
DANIEL BREWER:
Thank you very much for your time this morning. Superannuation – it’s been the big talking point over the last week. Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers has come out and says there won’t be any major changes. I guess the obvious question to that is, should Australians be worried?
PETER DUTTON:
I think Australians should be worried because they’ve worked hard for their money. They’ve put their money aside into their superannuation fund; they want that money for retirement and if you’ve now got a government talking about changes, which is completely different to what they said before the election, where they promised there would be no changes, then it creates a level of uncertainty. People will be taking financial advice, saying put extra money into your superannuation so that it’s there, you don’t have to draw on the pension or maybe just a part pension by the time you retire. If they keep changing the goalposts and keep changing the rules, then I think people are rightly very disturbed about what all of this change will mean. Generally when Labor talks about change, they’re talking about increased taxes.
DANIEL BREWER:
Now of course, when you are in government as Coalition, you allowed Australians to access superannuation due to the pandemic and I know a lot of people took advantage of that service to get through things. I guess the question there with that is, during the current environment, we know prices are going up, should Australians be able to access a little bit of their super at the moment?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, not for purposes other than their retirement. Obviously, we’ve got a very strong policy of allowing younger people and women who’ve separated later in life to access superannuation to purchase a home, but the money when you sell the house has to go back into the super fund and you get the compounding benefit of that by retirement. So, the purpose of superannuation is to support people in their retirement, that’s an important principle, but if the government needs to tax and tax and tax, then people won’t put money into super and more people will rely on the aged pension, which is obviously a big expense to the budget.
DANIEL BREWER:
Federal Opposition Leader Peter Dutton joins me this morning on The Big Breakfast.
So, from opposition, what will you be doing in relation to superannuation and potential changes if there are any from the government?
PETER DUTTON:
Well Daniel, the first thing we want to do is provide support to people around a safe asset class. So if you’re taking advice from your accountant or your financial advisor, it doesn’t mean much when you’re 30 or 35 years of age, but when you’re 40 or 45 or start to have kids or you’re thinking, well actually retirement is not that far away, you’re taking that financial advice and you want a safe asset to invest in – and superannuation should be that without chopping and changing it – so stability around super is important so that people know when they make a decision to invest according to the law, that the law is not going to keep changing on them and they end up with a big tax bill. I think that’s the first step, is to make sure that we can keep it a safe investment class.
Secondly, to make sure that super funds are chasing the best return possible for those who hold superannuation policies. So, we all understand risk and reward, but there are different stages in people’s lives where they might have a higher growth strategy or if they’re closer to retirement, they don’t want the risk with their product and their return will adjust accordingly. So it’s about providing that stability and maximising the returns so that people can have the retirement that they’ve work hard toward.
DANIEL BREWER:
Now, can I turn our attention obviously now to the cost of living. We know it’s hurting families hard at the moment. Interest rates are on the rise. We’re probably going to get another interest rate rise next month when the Reserve Bank meets. There’s also talk that interest rates will be going down over the next couple of years, but certainly high at the moment. Inflation is at an all time high. We’ve got the rental crisis. I’m not seeing a lot of movement from the government to help households. Are they doing enough?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, I guess the first job of the government is to make sure what they’re doing isn’t making it harder, even more difficult than what it would otherwise be. At the moment Daniel, you’ve got a government that’s making policy on the run in relation to energy, which is forcing up people’s power prices – and Keith Pitt has pointed this out of a number of occasions – you can’t turn the old system off until the new system is ready, because you’ll end up with disruption to the power supply, you’ll end up with higher power prices and we’re seeing higher power prices now – but not just power prices – people are paying more for their check out bill when they go to the supermarket, they’re paying more at the bowser when they fill up their car, they’re paying more and more for every line item in their household or small business budget.
I think the government is making it more difficult at the moment because the policies that they’re deciding on, the decisions that they’re making, are actually contributing to increasing inflation. If you push up inflation, then that’s what makes the Reserve Bank push up interest rates and your mortgage is higher. So, in the eight times that the Reserve Bank has met since the Labor Government’s been elected, they’ve increased interest rates eight times. Out of 100 times that they met during the former Coalition government’s time in office, they increased interest rates only on one occasion.
So, it shows that the management of the budget and of the economy is, you know, it’s difficult, you have to make tough decisions, but if you don’t make those tough decisions, then families and households end up paying the bill.
DANIEL BREWER:
We know here in the Wide Bay–Burnett, a lot of people are struggling at the moment, especially, as you say, with electricity. I think it was 97 times we heard during the election campaign about that rebate?
PETER DUTTON:
That’s spot on mate. The Prime Minister said on 97 occasions that they would reduce power prices by $275. They’d done the modelling, they had the plan they said, and since the election, of course the Prime Minister has never once mentioned that figure. I think a lot of Australians are really asking well, why? I mean, why make these promises before the election that you’re going to reduce power prices, that you’re going to reduce our mortgage bills, which is what the Prime Minister promised as well. His third promise, of course, was that he wouldn’t change the settings around superannuation and yet three broken promises and they have a direct financial impact on people’s lives.
There would be a lot of people who took comfort from the then Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese, saying that he had a plan to reduce power prices, and people would have voted for Labor on that basis and unfortunately they just haven’t got a plan and if anybody’s got a power bill that has gone down by $275 since May of last year, I would love to see it.
DANIEL BREWER:
Yeah, well mine certainly hasn’t. I know mine keeps going up and up.
And finally Mr Dutton, if I can, cyber security. We’ve seen the breaches with Optus and Medibank, a major retailer has admitted that they fell victim over the last week. There’s a roundtable yesterday with the Prime Minister announcing that there’s going to be a National Cyber Officer in a department. Where does the Opposition sit on this?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, we support any measure that the government’s going to put in place, but I’d just make this point. The Minister Clare O’Neil, one of her first acts when she came into office, was to actually scrap the $1.7 billion Cyber Security Strategy that we had in place. They still don’t have a new one, as you point out, they’re having all these roundtable discussions, but there’s no actual policy.
We had a coordinator in Home Affairs when we were in government and that was a cyber security coordinator. We put about $10 billion into the Australian Signals Directorate, which is one of the main bodies that tries to stop these attacks on us every day across the internet.
So, there is a lot of talk at the moment, we need more action because it’s families and small businesses, pensioners, self-funded retirees, all of those people and many, many more who end up as the victims of these scams. I hope the government can get their skates on here and get it done quickly because a lot of people are very vulnerable.
It’s really important to repeat the message of changing passwords, not just having a basic password, not having your date of birth or your children’s name, but something more complicated and change it regularly. Make sure that you’ve got upgrades whenever the upgrade comes through to your phone. Make sure you install that because that can provide extra protection as well.
DANIEL BREWER:
Federal Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, thank you so much for your time. But before you go, when are you coming to Bundaberg next?
PETER DUTTON:
Well Daniel, I’m due to come back mate. Keith Pitt is in my ear the whole time. So, I was up there recently, or a few months ago now for a funeral and I visited Keith a few months before that. I’m due a visit and I’m looking forward to coming back, you’ve got some great weather up there at the moment.
DANIEL BREWER:
We do indeed. We’re going to hold you to that. Thank you very much for your time.
PETER DUTTON:
Thank you, mate. Take care.
[ends]