Subjects: Cost of living pressures; the Prime Minister’s broken promise on a $275 cut to your power bills; gas supply; AUKUS; Paul Keating’s AUKUS rant; Aston by-election; NSW election.
E&OE.
ERIN MOLAN:
Joining me now is the Opposition Leader Peter Dutton. Peter, we’ll get onto AUKUS and your thoughts on Paul Keating in a second, but you just heard some of my opening words. Is this the kind of feedback that you’re getting on the ground as well?
PETER DUTTON:
Well firstly Erin, thanks very much for having me on the show. It’s great to be with you. There’s no question about that. I just don’t think the Prime Minister is in touch with average Australians, with people out in the suburbs who are really finding it difficult to balance their budgets. There are a lot of small businesses who are in the same predicament, and we were in Aston again this week doorknocking and people just are really struggling to understand how it is they reconcile the Prime Minister’s promise that he would reduce power prices by $275. Now, in Victoria they’re talking about power prices going up from the 1st of July by one third. I mean it’s unbelievable, and if it was just in isolation, it would be bad enough, but we’re talking about an increase in every other cost of living pressure, including, of course groceries and their insurance bills, their gas bills, you know, every item of their budget. Some of the small business people just saying that they’re going to have to increase their prices just to cope with the increased electricity costs of running their fridges and cold rooms, etc.
ERIN MOLAN:
On breakfast radio, we give away a heap of money – that’s how they do it in FM – and the reaction that we get now to say $100 prize is what we used to get to $5,000. That’s how much small amounts of money mean to people right now. You can just see in their reaction, it’s really heartbreaking. The government’s pointed to energy bill relief in May’s budget, but what can you guys as the Opposition do to pressure them to actually follow through, so it makes them –ridiculous to say this – but an actual difference to people.
PETER DUTTON:
Well Erin, we’ve supported the government where they’ve had good ideas and good policies, particularly around foreign affairs and national security, the things that are in our country’s best interests, and we’ll support measures that the government decides are going to help provide relief to the families that you’re talking about.
You’re exactly right; I mean people are now struggling and scratching for every dollar to make sure that they can balance their budgets. People are worried about job security, they’re worried about an increase in their mortgage repayments and every other element that we just spoke about. If the government’s got good ideas, we’ll support them. I mean the Prime Minister went to the election saying that he had a plan for all of this. He said that he would reduce people’s mortgage bills, he said that they would reduce power prices by $275, promised it on 97 occasions and he’s never mentioned it since.
You need to get more gas into the system so that you can try and reduce or have a downward pressure on the prices. As everyone knows, if you’ve got huge demand for gas and there is a limited supply, the price will skyrocket, and that’s what we’re seeing. The government’s going, you know, down the track of this obsession of pumping more and more renewable energy into the system, but you still need to pay for the full cost of firming up the renewables, and all of that cost is being passed onto consumers at the moment.
So, you know, Labor always find themselves in difficulty when they get into government. It’s not because of international factors, international factors are always there. The government knew that they were facing the difficulties with Ukraine and the impact on energy prices. They made the promises in relation to reducing power bills after Russia had gone into Ukraine. They put money into the budget to pay for these activist groups to take actions against gas companies so that the gas companies could be stopped from putting more gas into the system.
Labor always makes the wrong decisions. They can’t manage money and they’re making decisions that are putting upward pressure on inflation, and therefore, sadly for a lot of families, upward pressure on those interest rates.
ERIN MOLAN:
AUKUS, now, you are clearly backing the government here. That might be one of the few right decisions they’ve made, which is to continue the concept that you and Scott Morrison came up with whilst in power. Are there parts of watching this all unfold that are hard? Given it was, if I can use the term, ‘your baby’ originally.
PETER DUTTON:
Well, I mean, I’ve made this point to Richard Marles before, that it does feel like our baby and we’re entrusting it to him, and to the government’s credit, they’ve made the decisions…the Virginia-class submarine is the best in class. They’re acquiring it as we envisaged it would, so that you’ve got an early capability and it provides a deterrence so that any country would think twice about attacking Australia, and that’s very important in the modern age, and we’ve put a lot of work into AUKUS.
There was no deal when Labor was last in government. They’d reduced defence spending down to 1.56 per cent of GDP. They walked away from a lot of defence programs. Men and women in uniform across the country were demoralised by Labor’s attacks on cuts and the Americans and the Brits just never saw us as a credible partner in that environment.
We increased our spending in defence to above 2 per cent of GDP. We had the conversation initially with the British and then with the Americans about AUKUS. Those negotiations started in ’19-20 – that sort of period and it continued on. It was two or three years in the making. The Americans were originally never thinking about putting the offer of the Virginia-class on the table. I had some very serious discussions with Lloyd Austin, the Defense Secretary in the United States at the time, and that ended up being an option for us. So yeah, I mean that’s tough.
But in the end, the question for me is what’s in our country’s best interests? Our best interest is to make sure that AUKUS is delivered in the way that we had planned. That’s on track so far and we’ll support the government in decisions that they’re making. They’re big dollars that are involved and the government has to be honest and upfront about how they’re going to pay for that and that’s the next stage, obviously.
ERIN MOLAN:
Okay. I’m running out of time with you, but I’ve got a couple of other things I really want to get to. Paul Keating is one of them. Thirty seconds or less, your reaction to that?
PETER DUTTON:
I just think it shows that there is a lot of division within the left of the Labor Party. There are many people, including now Peter Garrett, the unions, and others who are against AUKUS. They’ve been clear about that and honest about it. So, there are deep divisions within the Labor Party and the Prime Minister has to reconcile that. But we will support the government in good decisions they make, but we’ll call them out where they’re making bad decisions.
ERIN MOLAN:
It’s really interesting you bring up divisions because the Prime Minister was out campaigning with New South Wales Labor Leader Chris Minns today. He had a crack at you. Have a listen.
[excerpt]
ANTHONY ALBANESE:
Peter Dutton wasn’t even at the campaign launch of Dominic Perrottet and hasn’t been seen with Dominic Perrottet since last October. The truth is that the Liberal Party are a dysfunctional Party. They’re riven by division. They’re not fighting for the people of New South Wales because they’re too busy fighting each other.
ERIN MOLAN:
Has Dominic Perrottet asked you to stay away?
PETER DUTTON:
Well Erin, that’s what is called a ‘beltway conversation’. The Prime Minister has been in Parliament for 26 years and he is completely and utterly out of touch with Australian families. Do you think anyone is sitting around their kitchen table tonight wondering how it is they’re going to pay the bills this month, how it is they’re going to afford to fill the car up before they go to sport tomorrow, how they’re going to afford to pay their electricity bill that’s gone up by another 30 per cent under Labor, do you think they’re talking about, you know, who’s sitting in the audience in the Liberal Party campaign launch? People couldn’t give a toss about any of that. They’re worried about their own situation.
Let’s be honest about it, Anthony Albanese is down there. I’ve been campaigning in Aston, which is the federal by-election, not the state election in New South Wales. I’ve been in Victoria and I’ve been there more times than the Prime Minister. What’s the point? The Prime Minister and the Treasurer are now talking about taxing the family home. They won’t live up to the promises that they made at the last election. They’re talking about taxing people on capital gains that aren’t yet realised. So if there is an uplift in your asset value – in your shares or your house or your commercial property – they’re talking about taxing you on the gain that you would make in a particular year before you actually sell the asset. So I just think he’s off on these frolics and all I think it demonstrates is how out of touch he is with families who are really struggling under Labor.
ERIN MOLAN:
Look, I don’t disagree with that, but you’re a very clever politician too in that you’ve avoided answering that question on whether Dom has asked you to campaign with him or asked you not to?
PETER DUTTON:
I’ve been asked by the New South Wales division to come down and campaign and I haven’t. I mean yesterday I could have been in New South Wales, I was doorknocking with Roshena Campbell in Aston because I want to win that by-election. At the federal campaign launch, I won’t be inviting Dominic Perrottet and the other state leaders because it’s a federal campaign. Australians aren’t stupid. I mean the Prime Minister might think they are and he can make all of these promises and then break them after the election. He can break trust with the Australian people, but people know that there is a state election which is quite separate to a federal election.
I’ve got no interest in being down there. I want to be in Victoria. We’re sitting in Parliament next week and then, in fact I’m going to Melbourne this Sunday. That’s where my priority is at the moment, as you would expect, it’s a federal by-election. The Prime Minister’s first act when he was in government, in the first budget in October of last year after they’d been elected in May, was to cut five road funding projects from Aston. When I was doorknocking yesterday, that’s what people are talking about in Aston and Roshena Campbell is alive to that. They’re not worried about what’s happening in New South Wales. That’s an issue for Dominic Perrottet and the Labor leader.
I hope that Dominic Perrottet gets up because I mean we’ve seen – in not to many years ago – the dysfunction of Labor and as we’re seeing at a federal level now, they can’t manage money, they can’t manage the budget or the economy and bad luck always besets Labor when they get into government.
Peter Costello and John Howard always made the right decisions. I was the Assistant Treasurer to Peter Costello and when we’re elected in 2025 we’ll have a big Labor mess to clean up, but clean it up we will. We’ll make the right decisions that will see downward pressure on people’s electricity prices and gas prices, instead of watching Chris Bowen and Anthony Albanese continue to drive prices up, which families just can’t afford.
ERIN MOLAN:
I love your confidence and I will say, I actually watched the New South Wales Liberal Party launch on Channel 603, but I was probably the only person in Australia, so I can guarantee that you speaking to the majority there.
PETER DUTTON:
How did you stay awake? You must have had a glass of wine Erin. How’d you stay awake?
ERIN MOLAN:
I had a couple I reckon.
PETER DUTTON:
I’ve been to plenty of those campaign launches, I can tell you on a Saturday or Sunday I’d prefer to be with my kids at home.
ERIN MOLAN:
Smart move. My daughter was away that was my excuse. Peter Dutton, thank you so much for your time, as always.
PETER DUTTON:
Take care. Thanks Erin.
ERIN MOLAN:
Thank you very much.
[ends]