Subjects: Visit to WA; the Prime Minister’s home grown inflation; Labor’s cost of living and energy crisis; the Coalition’s plan to deliver cheaper, cleaner and consistent energy; nuclear power; GST; the Liberal Party in WA; Labor’s nature positive bill; visit to Israel; the Prime Minister’s lack of leadership; Rex Airlines – the Albanese Government’s duty to protect rural and regional Australia.
E&OE.
GARY ADSHEAD:
First up though, Peter Dutton, Opposition Leader joins me. Welcome back to Western Australia, Peter.
PETER DUTTON:
Pleasure Gary. Great to be back mate. Thank you.
GARY ADSHEAD:
Alright.
Now, just this week, inflation rose a little – hopefully not enough for the RBA to increase interest rates though next week. Simple question; what would a Government under you do in its first couple of months to lower inflation if the needle hasn’t moved by that next election?
PETER DUTTON:
Well Gary, first point, I agree with you. I mean everyone hopes and prayers that the Reserve Bank won’t increase interest rates, but they have increased them 12 times since the Prime Minister’s been elected. And there’s a reason for that, because in other parts of the world, interest rates are starting to come down, inflationary pressures are starting to ease, but as the Reserve Bank Governor has pointed out, our problem here in Australia is home grown. That is that the problem is created here in Australia by Government policy.
So, the first thing that we would do is to make sure that you’re not spending wastefully in the economy, because the more money you pump into the economy, the longer inflation will stay higher, or increase – that’s what we’ve seen under this Government. They’ve spent something like an additional $315 billion and that money going into the economy at exactly the wrong time increases inflation.
The other thing that we’ve got to get right is the energy policy because when you look at your power bill, it’s not just your power bill that’s gone up, it’s the farmer’s power bill that’s gone up, it’s the cold storage bill that’s gone up, it’s the IGA that’s paying more for their electricity. All of that feeds into higher prices across the economy for goods and services – and it’s particularly part of the reason why people are paying more for groceries when they go to the supermarket.
GARY ADSHEAD:
Alright. So does that take us to your nuclear energy policy? Is that what you’re saying, or are you talking nearer term than that?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, certainly nuclear is part of the solution, but it’s a medium to longer term solution. We need to get more gas into the system – that much is obvious. I just think the Government’s approach of a renewables only policy – firstly, it has not worked anywhere else in the world. The Government, as the independent regulator points out, has a policy which is likely now to lead to blackouts and brownouts, and you can’t turn the old system off until the new one’s ready. I mean that emotion is now starting to be replaced with reality.
You can pretend that the wind and solar can run the cold rooms, or the hospitals, or your freezer of a night time, but it just can’t. You need to have that baseload power – 90 per cent of the baseload power, predominantly coal, is coming out of the system by 2034, and the Government has no solution for it. They’ve spoken about green hydrogen as being a firming, or 24/7 power to firm up the renewables, but that’s not prospective now.
That’s why our argument is that nuclear is part of that – but certainly gas is going to play a much bigger role – and we have to accept the reality that if we want to keep a functioning economy and keep the lights on, we have to have an energy policy that’s fit for purpose.
GARY ADSHEAD:
You have obviously brought Collie into that equation of nuclear energy. Have you been there, or are you heading to Collie to talk about your policy?
PETER DUTTON:
I haven’t been up to Collie yet, but Ted O’Brien has. So, I’ve been up to a couple of the sites. We’ve identified seven sites, as you know, across the country, and Collie is one of those. We’ve done a lot of work with Rick Wilson and we’ll continue that engagement.
I’ll be up there at some stage, but we have to make sure that we have an honest conversation with communities. We have a higher energy IQ, particularly in the West, but in those communities where there is a coal fired power station now. And they know that once that end of life takes place, once the coal fired power station closes down, those jobs are going. As we’ve seen in Wyoming, in the United States, as we see in Ontario in Canada, as we see in France, the communities are strongly supportive of nuclear in those communities. A, because it’s zero emissions, but B, because the jobs transfer from the coal fired generators across into the latest technology nuclear; and that means that those plants can be an underpinning of prosperity for those communities. In many cases, it means that heavy industry is attracted to those communities, or can be retained in those communities because there’s a cheaper price – you don’t have the 28,000km of new poles and wires that the Prime Minister is proposing.
And it also means, frankly, I think there’s a moral argument to this debate which we haven’t spoken properly about yet, that is that we’re treating our country cousins in a different way than we are people who live in the cities. They are, at the moment, as you know, being asked to lose productive farming land for massive solar arrays. We know that wind is problematic, particularly in some regional areas where people lose their amenity, or it’s a blight on the landscape and it’s not producing the sort of power that the Government’s promising, which is why the power prices will continue to go up under a Labor Government.
GARY ADSHEAD:
So just a yes or no – would you be visiting Collie in our South West before the end of the year?
PETER DUTTON:
Yes.
GARY ADSHEAD:
Okay, alright.
PETER DUTTON:
Yes, most definitely. Very happy to.
GARY ADSHEAD:
Okay.
GST – you know that whenever you come to WA, usually it raises its head some way, shape or form. Anthony Albanese went to the lengths of even signing a pledge not to change the GST formula for WA. Will you?
PETER DUTTON:
Look, I’m happy to do whatever stunt’s is required, Gary, but I think there’s more substantive responses that are required. The PM’s great at gimmicks. I think you pay on performance, and when we were in Government, we made a decision to put in place the current GST arrangement. I was part of the Cabinet that made that decision. On my first visit here as Leader, I gave that pledge straight off the bat, and I’m happy to repeat it.
I think I’ve been here 16 times since being Leader, and I’ll spend as much time as I can in the West and make sure that the very clear message is heard, that is not we’re not proposing any changes. There will be no changes to the GST formula. I can’t be any more definite than that.
But I think you pay on performance, because it’s not just the GST, it’s the way in which you manage the economy – which is a disaster under the Albanese Government, it’s the way in which you manage inflation – which has only gone up under the Government, it’s a way in which you manage migration, our border security and all of these other issues, which I think will weigh on people’s minds by the time of the next election.
GARY ADSHEAD:
Alright. So beyond 2026 and that Productivity Commission review of the GST formula, are you saying no matter what they come up with, you’ll stick to minimum $0.70 in the in the dollar floor?
PETER DUTTON:
Yes, Gary, and we’ve been very clear about that. There are good reasons. What I don’t want to do is chastise, or penalise Western Australia for the economic powerhouse that you are. I want to actually encourage more production. I think we should be opening more mining. I think we should be creating more jobs because I’ve just come back from Israel and it puts all of our problems into perspective, really. But we live in a very uncertain world, and we are going to have to spend more money on defence. There’s more money that we need to spend in housing, and more money that we need to spend in schooling and health and roads and infrastructure, etc. If we don’t promote economic activity in the West, then the Australian economy doesn’t function and we don’t pay for those necessary investments.
GARY ADSHEAD:
Have any of your Liberal colleagues been telling you that you’re not paying enough attention to Western Australia, given that it might be a pathway to Government come 2025? Are you being told that?
PETER DUTTON:
No, but we’ve had very purposeful discussions with all my colleagues about how we can do more to improve our standing in the West. Obviously at a state level, our brand has been diminished. Mark McGowan was a very popular Premier – people voted against Scott Morrison at the last election, not just because they were unhappy with Scott Morrison, but also because they were very happy with Mark McGowan at a state level. That’s now gone. Roger Cook seems like a nice enough person.
But we need to make sure that the Liberal Party is strong in WA, because if we don’t, then, three more years of an Albanese Government, particularly if it’s a minority government – and that seems to be probably the best prospect for Labor at the next election is to be in a minority government with the Greens and the Greens-Teals – that would be a disaster economically for the country, but for Western Australia in particular.
So I think there are many reasons why we need to improve our standing and we’ve got great candidates. We’ll have more policies to talk about, which I think will be a definite benefit to WA by the time of the next election. We’ll continue to do whatever it takes because if we don’t win seats in the West, we don’t win Government.
GARY ADSHEAD:
You say, ‘strong’ enough – it’s got to be strong in WA, the Liberal Party. Under Libby Mettam, do you think it looks strong enough?
PETER DUTTON:
Yeah, I do, and I think it’s building. I think, certainly my engagement with Libby, I found her to be a very decent person, an honourable person and…
GARY ADSHEAD:
Is she cutting through, Peter? Is she cutting through?
PETER DUTTON:
I think she is, but off a low base – let’s be honest about it. The Liberal Party was at its lowest point at the last election, and to build back is going to take time. I think Libby is doing that in an admirable way, but it’s difficult. The Labor Party has the union movement, they have industry super funds putting money in, they’ve got the CFMEU and others who do the bidding of the Labor Party and that’s hard to compete with.
Most business people who support the Liberal Party are happy to do so privately, but because they’ve got contracts with the WA Government, or the Federal Government, sometimes they don’t talk out publicly. But a lot of business leaders here in WA that I meet with privately, and not just in the mining sector, are completely horrified by what they’re seeing out of Canberra from Labor at the moment.
Tanya Plibersek, who’s desperate to keep her seat in inner -ity Sydney from the Greens, Anthony Albanese whose seat is at risk from the Greens – every policy that they decide is through the lens of how they can stop the bleed of and the hemorrhaging of Labor votes to the Greens. That will have, ultimately, a detrimental impact here in the West. The Nature Positive Bill is a mine industry destroying bill, and they won’t tell you what it’s about, they won’t release it. And this is what they did on the Voice. They hold back the detail until after the election.
I think if Mr Albanese’s re-elected, the landscape here in WA will change for the worse dramatically, because they’ll be in minority government.
GARY ADSHEAD:
You said, and we know you’ve just come back from Israel. Of course, it’s, you know, moving very quickly in terms of Middle East politics at the moment. Can I just ask, did your office let the PM’s office know you were going?
PETER DUTTON:
No and nor do we need to. I don’t answer to the Prime Minister. We take advice from DFAT, we take advice from the Australian Federal Police. I don’t advise the Prime Minister when I’m travelling, nor does he advise me.
GARY ADSHEAD:
Were you guests of the Israeli Government?
PETER DUTTON:
I met with the Prime Minister, I met with the President, I met with the Foreign Minister, I met with other Ministers. I think there’s bewilderment that our Prime Minister hasn’t been to Israel, and he’s done that quite deliberately because he’s trying to win votes in Western Sydney. I think the level of anti-Semitism in our country is a disgrace. I think the Prime Minister has allowed that to flourish. People in the Jewish community here in Australia, when you speak to them – these are Holocaust survivors, who, for the first time, and they’ve lived here since 1945 – will say that they feel unsafe in our country. I think that’s a shameful situation that the Prime Minister has presided over.
So, would he want to throw red herrings out and distractions about whether he was advised about whether I was travelling, of course he would, because he doesn’t want to talk about the main reality of the situation that he’s created. It’s not just about Israel, to be honest, it’s about standing up for our values and making sure that the West stands united. The Prime Minister didn’t go to the Leaders’ Summit in Washington a couple of weeks ago to meet NATO leaders there, and I can tell you many of them were, again, bewildered as to why the Prime Minister wasn’t there standing up for what our soldiers have fought for, for our freedom of speech, for the adherence to the rule of international law, to make sure that young girls can go to school.
Hamas is a terrorist organisation, a listed a terrorist organisation. It slaughtered the Jewish people in the biggest attack on the Jewish population since the Holocaust, where six million people were gassed. We do need to stand with our friends. Israel has provided intelligence to us. They did when I was Home Affairs Minister, which helped us thwart terrorist attacks in our own country.
So it’s why the relationship is important – the Prime Minister should’ve been there by now. We had very productive meetings and I consider our relationship with Israel absolutely integral to our continued support of the effort of ASIO and ASIS and the Australian Defence Force in keeping the Australian public safe.
GARY ADSHEAD:
Just last question – obviously, the situation with Rex Airlines. Do you think that the Government should be prepared to take a stake in this airline and to secure regional services, given how crucial it is?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, we have to keep Rex running because we know that between Qantas and Virgin, they have 90 per cent plus share of the market. So we need the competitive tension in the pricing. We need to make sure that they can continue, particularly, to operate the regional routes, because the bigger airlines can’t run their aircraft – not efficiently – on those routes.
So I’m supportive of the Government taking action to keep Rex afloat. Whether or not an equity position is the best position to take…
GARY ADSHEAD:
Subsidies?
PETER DUTTON:
…Is we’d have to look at what’s been proposed…
GARY ADSHEAD:
Subsidies perhaps? More subsidies?
PETER DUTTON:
…It’s what’s happened…
GARY ADSHEAD:
Yeah, yeah.
PETER DUTTON:
It’s what’s happened in the past, and when we look at the airline industry over a long period of time, whether it’s in relation to Bonza, or Australian Airlines or Ansett – it’s a difficult operating environment. The fact is that Qantas and others squeeze airlines like Rex, very significantly.
So we’ve got to be realistic because we’re using taxpayers money. But if Rex collapses, people in regional areas are going to be abandoned, and that’s particularly the case right across any remote and regional area. We need to make sure that we can support their sustainability.
GARY ADSHEAD:
Peter Dutton, thanks very much for your time.
PETER DUTTON:
Pleasure Gary. Take care mate. I’ll speak to you soon.
[ends]