THE HON PETER DUTTON MP
LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION
FEDERAL MEMBER FOR DICKSON
TRANSCRIPT
INTERVIEW WITH GARY ADSHEAD,
MORNINGS, RADIO 6PR
22 May 2024
Subjects: Visit to WA; Anthony Albanese’s tax credits for billionaires; nuclear energy; Labor’s continuing immigration detention shambles.
E&OE……………………………………………………………………………………………
GARY ADSHEAD:
Now, Peter Dutton, the Opposition Leader – I think he’s in Perth, I think he’s just landed – joins me on the line. Thanks very much for your time Peter.
PETER DUTTON:
Good morning Gary. Pleasure mate, thank you.
GARY ADSHEAD:
You’re in WA for a couple of days, aren’t you? I think.
PETER DUTTON:
Yes, I am. We just arrived from Melbourne this morning. So, weather’s nice and we’ve got a pretty jampacked day.
GARY ADSHEAD:
A little too nice, we do need some rain.
Now look, can I just ask you then, you’ve lobbed into WA, but do you not feel that you’ve put a bit of an anti-mining target on your back here in WA? Saying that production tax credits are ‘handouts for billionaires’?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, I think we’ve done the complete opposite. I want to see WA boom. I want to put in place the conditions that can allow additional investment to be made, and I want to make sure that we can reduce approval times and provide incentive for investments to be made. There’s insatiable demand for many of our resources in critical minerals around the world, and as we’ve seen, there’s also a lot of capital around of people who are willing to invest into projects. We’ll have more of that conversation with some of the key players here on this trip as well, and we’ll be talking about ways in which we can provide further assistance.
I think, to be honest, and if we’re being frank; it’s okay for Madeleine King and others to say one thing when they’re in the West, but when you hear people like Chris Bowen and Tanya Plibersek and the Prime Minister in the East, it’s all against mining and it’s all against investment being made, and it’s all against essentially the interests of WA. I want WA to boom so that the country can benefit, and it’s an economic powerhouse, and we’ll put in place the settings for that to happen.
GARY ADSHEAD:
Are you going to be talking to, for example, the Association of Mining and Exploration Companies? Because front and centre on their website right now is their report on why Australia needs production tax credits. Now, that covers a lot of the people that you would like to be winning over ahead of the 2025 election. So, have you actually read their report?
PETER DUTTON:
Gary, we’ve been speaking with them, I understand the ask. There are other asks that companies have, and associations have, and other issues that they want us to address as well. So, that’s not the only option on the table, and we’re very keen for those discussions to continue.
I’m very happy to have a chat with Chris Ellison again, a man for whom I have a great deal of respect, and probably one of the smartest business people in the country – and he’s not a billionaire by mistake, he’s been able to make investments. Of course, companies will take tax deductions or different programmes that can provide an ability for projects to stand up. Again, we’re happy to continue those conversations.
I think there are more important ways and beneficial ways that we could help, and we can have more to say about that over the course of the coming months.
GARY ADSHEAD:
All right. So you talk about Chris Ellison there, because obviously he’s spoken now and says that you’ve got this ‘wrong’, to be against it. Does that concern you? Have you asked Gina Rinehart for her views?
PETER DUTTON:
I haven’t asked Gina for her views, and I haven’t had a chance to speak to Chris, but I know both of them very well. I’ve got the utmost respect for both of them – and for many others in the sector here in WA who have invested money and they’ve done well – and there are others within the sector and across the economy who will take any handout from a Government if it’s on offer – I mean that’s just a natural instinct.
I want to make sure that we’ve got a sensible energy policy – as the energy regulator points out, the likelihood of there being blackouts and brownouts, of cost increases, and we also know that manufacturing in our country, there’s a three-fold increase in the number of insolvencies over the last two years; people won’t to invest in an uncertain market, which is what they see at the moment, and it’s part of the reason that we see companies like Telstra putting off 2,800 workers, because they are worried, very worried about inflation, and worried about the economic settings in our country at the moment.
GARY ADSHEAD:
Just sticking with the tax credits, though, because in reality I know the language has been used that it’s ‘handouts to billionaires’, but this is actually to encourage – before they can get any kind of credit, companies have had to invest in refineries, etc.. They have to have done the work in order to get the credit, and it’s not just the big companies. This is sort of middle ground players as well, and it encourages that incentive as other countries around the world have done. So, it does sort of seem counterintuitive that you’ve gone down this path, particularly in a state like Western Australia, which is very important to you at the next election?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, I’m more worried about how we can provide a policy which is going to be sustainable, and more interested in how we can help the WA economy build, and harness the entrepreneurial spirit that’s alive well and truly in WA.
I’m also cognisant of the fact that it’s about $13.7 billion of taxpayers’ money, and we’re investing into projects in some cases where the private sector won’t invest, that Chris Ellison wouldn’t invest in to. So, the question is whether we should be investing taxpayers’ money into some of those projects. Very happy to look at different proposals and to refine and find ways that we can help to make sure that the projects get off the ground, that they’re productive, but as I say, we’re in an environment now where the Federal Government’s talking about building solar panel manufacturing plants, or investing into AI quantum computing at a cost of half a billion dollars, just off the back of advice from Labor lobbyists.
We need to be realistic about where we’re spending taxpayers’ money. I want to reduce taxes, not increase them, and I think there are many ways in which we can help the sector, the mining sector, and the agricultural sector, boom, and that’s what we’re working…
GARY ADSHEAD:
…I’m not denying that some of the Future Made in Australia scenario sort of has a touch of the ABC’s Utopia meetings around it. I get that, but, you know, you’ve got a problem here, because the WA Liberal Leader, Libby Mettam, was very quick to work out, ‘no, I’ve got a back this tax credit production issue, because if it’s good for Western Australian mining, I don’t want to be talking against it’.
PETER DUTTON:
Yeah, but to be fair Gary, I mean, Libby and I had a different view on the Voice as well…
GARY ADSHEAD:
Yep.
PETER DUTTON:
…I was strongly opposed to the Voice. I believe that we will look very deeply at the options available to us, we will have a package which makes very clear our intent to support, to invest in, to see WA prosper. We’re not going to have an energy policy, which is renewables only, the Nature Positive Bill, when you speak to a lot of the big miners, that would be the death knell for mining in WA. The Government has just withdrawn that. It’s a plan where they made people sign non-disclosure agreements before they entered into conversations. Now, to the credit of the Premier, he demanded that the Prime Minister pull it off the table – and all Anthony Albanese’s done is said that we’ll look at it after the election.
So, if you end up with a Labor-Greens Coalition election after the next election, I promise you $13.7 billion won’t go anywhere near fixing up the damage that Labor will do to the mining economy here in WA. It will be near impossible to get projects up and it will make it more and more difficult because in the end, the Labor Party’s not interested in WA at a federal level, they’re interested in seats in Sydney and Melbourne that are at risk of being lost to the Greens. So when you look at some of the crazy decisions that they’re making, it is all based around how do they hold the support of the left voting Green voters in those inner city seats – like the Prime Minister’s own seat – and they couldn’t care less, frankly, about regions, or about WA or outer suburbs, and that’s not something that motivates or drives us.
I want to see genuinely – I come from a business background – I want to see this State grow, and I believe that we will have the better policy. If the Prime Minister’s got nothing to hide, why not put the Nature Positive Bill out on the table now for public consumption, so that we can see exactly what it is that he would implement after the election? It’s sort of like the Voice debate where, you know, ‘just trust us and vote for it, and then we’ll give you the detail afterwards’. Well, that just doesn’t cut it.
GARY ADSHEAD:
All right. Just moving on to another subject, but here’s Jim Chalmers reacting to the CSIRO’s final report in terms of the cost of nuclear energy for Australia. Here’s what Jim Chalmers said this morning:
[excerpt]
JIM CHALMERS:
The CSIRO has completely torpedoed this uncosted nuclear fantasy of Peter Dutton’s. You know, nuclear costs more and it takes longer, and Peter Dutton won’t tell us where the reactors are going to go. Which suburbs? Which regions? Which towns? Which cities?
[end excerpt]
GARY ADSHEAD:
Yeah. Okay. Now, just quickly then, CSIRO say that the cost of one reactor would be around $16 billion, not operational till 2040. What’s your reaction?
PETER DUTTON:
Okay, well, I mean a few points to make here Gary. Firstly, if you have a look at wind turbines and debate in WA here at the moment, I think that is a hot debate and that continues. So, if the Government has a renewables only policy, which is what they’re headed towards, there won’t be heavy industry that can rely on intermittent power like solar and wind. I think the social licence for big wind projects in rural communities, where people in regional areas are being asked to carry all of that load for the benefit of people in cities, I just don’t think that’s going to wash. So, I think there’s an emerging debate there.
The Prime Minister wants to tell you, as the Treasurer does, that power prices will keep coming down the more wind and solar that we have, but it’s a nonsense. They try to force gas out of the market – I mean they’ve come up with a new gas policy now, which I don’t think would survive a Greens alliance if that’s what happens after the next election, if they go into government together – and without that peaking power and without the ability to firm up the renewables, we do have disruption and prices continue to go up.
Now, in relation to the report, the other point I’d make is that out of the top 20 economies in the world, Australia is the only one that doesn’t have or hasn’t signed up to nuclear. We know that many of the countries coming out of COP26 and France and Canada and others have committed to more nuclear energy. So, why for 19 of the biggest economies in the world, is it cheaper to deliver nuclear energy – and in many cases firming up renewable, than what it is here? So, the current policy settings aren’t conducive to having a reasonable debate about it because they’re all stacked against nuclear power and in favour of solar and wind.
My position ultimately, and I suppose because I come from a business background, as I say, I want a mix of energy. There’s no silver bullet here. I want a cheaper electricity, I want a greener electricity, and I want consistent power so that we can have manufacturing. Smelters can’t run on intermittent power, and as we know, at the moment, the Government’s asking big users of energy, big manufacturers, big smelters, etc. to turn off production, or to turn it down in an afternoon shift because the energy grid can’t survive when people come home from their jobs to plug in the car and turn on the washing machine and start cooking dinner, etc., etc.. That is a ridiculous situation, and that’s why I think, frankly, the 19 countries have got it right and Australia’s got it wrong.
The other point I’d make, Gary, is that Labor’s all over the place on this. Peter Malinauskas in South Australia – the Premier there, is strongly in favour. I suspect Mark McGowan would have been a strong advocate, if he was given the chance to have an honest conversation, as opposed to being monstered by a green Prime Minister who lives in inner-city Sydney.
GARY ADSHEAD:
Hey, I know that this is only something that’s developed in the last hour – a story that’s gone up online by Paul Garvey, who’s here in Western Australia on The Australian‘s website. But, are you across, a Sudan born, Emmanuel Saki, he has been released from detention, and now the suggestion is that he has stabbed – allegedly – stabbed a 22 year old man, and is now back in custody in relation to charges of murder. Do you know what the scenario was? Or have you heard anything about what the scenario is around his release from detention in the first place?
PETER DUTTON:
Gary, I’ve seen the story, and I’ve taken some legal advice in relation to the matter.
GARY ADSHEAD:
Okay.
PETER DUTTON:
As I understand it, the allegation is that this person’s committed murder. If you look at the background, he’s had a troubled background, lots of charges and allegations, etc., etc.. He hasn’t received citizenship over a long period of time, and when we were in government, I cancelled the visa of 6,300 people – bikies and people who have committed rape and sexual assault, etc..
The Government watered that down when they came into power, and it meant that other considerations had to be taken into account as to whether or not the person would be deported. In the judgement – when you have a look at the judgement from the AAT – they make reference to the watering down that the Prime Minister introduced. It was designed to try and please New Zealand, but this person, as you say, comes from Sudan, and it’s meant that this person was released out into the community as a result of Mr Albanese’s watering down of the tight character cancellation provisions.
I think it’s a tragic circumstance. I think the Minister’s position is totally and utterly untenable, and it builds on the 150 odd people that they released into the community. As you well know in WA, some of those people have gone on to allegedly commit very serious offences. I don’t think this problem is finished yet, because as I understand it, there are many others…
GARY ADSHEAD:
Right.
PETER DUTTON:
…Who have been released prematurely, or haven’t been deported because of the Prime Minister’s watering down of those character provisions.
GARY ADSHEAD:
So this guy, Saki, though, is not one of the 150 plus who were released because of the High Court decision, this was an Administrative Appeals Tribunal decision to overturn a previous decision to take away his visa and then, of course, released into the community and now charges of murder?
PETER DUTTON:
That’s exactly right. So, in addition to the 150, but the reasons in the judgement go to the reasons that the previous position, cancellation, that the visa has been overturned is because of the changes the Prime Minister made to water down the character provisions that would have seen this person held in immigration detention and not out in the community.
I think there’s a lot to play out in relation to this story. I think it’s very serious, and I think our country is less safe because of these bad decisions that the Government’s making in relation to these law and order issues at the moment.
GARY ADSHEAD:
Alright, like I said, it’s only just sort of broken in the last hour. I appreciate you joining us today. Enjoy your stay in WA.
Pleasure Gary. Thanks mate.
[ends]