Subjects: Queensland police tragedy; the government’s energy and gas policy trainwreck; the Prime Minister’s broken promise on a $275 cut to your power bills; gas supply; nuclear energy; 2GB St Vinnies Christmas Radiothon.
E&OE
JOHN STANLEY:
The Opposition Leader is joining us on the line right now, at 18 minutes past seven, we’ve got Peter Dutton there now?
PETER DUTTON:
Good morning, John.
JOHN STANLEY:
Peter Dutton, good morning to you. I know you’ve had a very busy day in Parliament. There’s a lot to talk about and I know the energy Bill, in particular, I want to discuss that with you. But as you’d know the whole nation is in shock at what happened in Queensland. You’re a former Queensland police officer, you talked about this in the Parliament yesterday and it’s very personal for you and you can give us that perspective, can’t you, of what it’s like as being a member of the police family?
PETER DUTTON:
Well John, it’s a tragedy for the family and it’s a life sentence for them because they’ve lost two individuals who were in their 20s, who wanted nothing more than to keep their community safe and they went to work, they were just honourable, decent people. It’s not just the family, but it’s, as you point out mate, it’s the broader police family. Whether you are a serving police officer or retired, that always stays with you because there’s that camaraderie, there’s difficult circumstances that you’ve worked in with police and fellow officers and it’s why that camaraderie, or the brotherhood as they refer to it, exists.
It’s particularly difficult in a circumstance where, and more of this detail will come out I suspect, but the execution-style, just the barbaric way in which these human beings lost their lives – the two police officers and the next door neighbour, Mr Dare. It was just beyond comprehension. It sends a shiver down any police officer’s spine because if you’re going to a scene where you know there are weapons, or you know that there’s violence, you can prepare yourself for that, but where you’re going to check on somebody’s wellbeing, a school principal, there wouldn’t have been any red flags.
So, it’s a very tough day, mate, and a very tough time for police, and the funeral will be next Wednesday. So, there will be a big outpouring of emotion as well.
JOHN STANLEY:
Yeah. Can I ask, you’re a former Home Affairs Minister and you would know things that obviously can’t be talked about publicly. But the idea of some of this online radicalisation, some of this mad anti-authoritarian stuff that rattles around the internet. It is a worry. I know people have talked about what this fellow was up to and the extent to which we need to keep on top of it.
PETER DUTTON:
Well, it certainly is, John. I think the parallel obviously is with young people as we saw a few years ago who were being indoctrinated online with the ISIL ideology, just a hatred of authority. I think the onus is on friends and families, people in workplaces, if you see these signs and people who have changed their behaviour radically – either an anti-authoritarian approach or just espousing crazy conspiracy theories – it is worth contacting the authorities or the police or speaking with other family members, because you just don’t know what these people are consuming online and they spend hours and hours and hours breeding misinformation and information is deliberately posted, knowing that it will influence people in a negative way. There are some sick individuals out there and the internet’s made it possible for them to spread their lies and their hatred. So, it is difficult for authorities to pick that up. We’ve been talking for years about these encrypted messaging apps where people can communicate without the police being able to see any of that detail, even if they’ve got a warrant from a court, and that compounds to a point where people snap and perhaps there’s part of that in this instance, as well.
JOHN STANLEY:
Yeah, I guess I said there are things you can’t talk about, because some of this stuff’s got to be kept to the approach of the authorities but we can have some confidence that they’re trying to deal with what you’ve just discussed and trying to crack that open to try and see what’s going on?
PETER DUTTON:
They certainly are and I mean in different circumstances they’ll have human intelligence and the ability to be able to collect intelligence from people who are working undercover on the inside of some of these networks. But the trouble, of course, like anything within the internet is just the sheer scale and the lack of visibility. It’s the case that you know, over our lifetimes, police would go to the court, get a warrant, knock on somebody’s door or check their messages on their phone if they were part of a criminal syndicate. But now, with encryption, it means the messages are protected so that even if there’s a warrant from the court, they can’t discover the detail. It’s like going to someone’s house and asking for access to the safe because you’ve got a warrant to search it, and you’re not being able to get into the safe. It’s a technology issue, it’s a scale issue, and it’s why people shouldn’t hesitate to contact the police if they see a really radical change in somebody’s behavior.
JOHN STANLEY:
That’s really important. Now, of course, yesterday, the energy Bill’s gone through, the numbers were there for it, so the way you voted was going to be more symbolic. But you voted against the whole legislation, including these power bill rebates which I assume you would have supported, but you weren’t going to support those if it meant supporting the price caps, correct?
PETER DUTTON:
Correct, John. We tried to split the Bill and we wanted to support the $1.5 billion measure which was going to help people get some relief and obviously a lot of people are just getting crazy power bills and they’re going up and up, and in the government’s budget in October, they predicted that they would go up further, even after two years of Labor’s policies. So, we supported that, but we’re strongly against the market intervention, which we think is – as we’ve already seen, frankly, from the responses from the companies – going to interrupt investments and it’s going to interrupt jobs and those jobs will just go offshore and the emissions will go with them. It just makes no sense whatsoever. But the government was playing games and they were tricky. They had the numbers, so they kept the Bill together because they saw that as a wedge against us. That’s fine, that’s the politics that the Prime Minister is playing, and people can see through that, but it’s a very serious Bill and I don’t think we fully understand the consequences of it yet – but we will over the next couple of years.
JOHN STANLEY:
Yeah, and you believe that in the longer term – well we know prices are going to go up anyway next year, they’re going to go up according to this by less than they would have – but you think they could, particularly two years out, there could be significant increases?
PETER DUTTON:
There’s a lot of talk now, John, about disruptions to supply in the network. So, we’re talking about blackouts as we’ve seen in California, as we’ve seen in Germany, and as we’ve seen in Germany before Ukraine. Ukraine has just compounded the problem there. The problem here is it’s driven by an ideology and Chris Bowen’s leading this debate where they want people to throw out their gas appliances and they’re now talking about cheap loans to households to get electric appliances because they want to turn off an old system before the new system is ready and that is going to create disruption and it’s going to mean power prices going up. The main reason that people’s power prices are going up now is because more gas and coal is required to firm up the amount of renewables coming into the system and renewables coming into the system is fine, but we’ve got to be able to firm them up so that people can have power of a nighttime and manufacturers – as we’ve seen Western Australia only in the last couple of weeks – are really on the edge of their seats because these people are employing hundreds of thousands of Australians. We want more Australian manufacturing, but because they’re big users of energy, they’re now being paid to turn off their manufacturing processes during the peak periods of say between five and seven at night when people come home to prepare dinner and air conditioners go on etc. Well, that’s just madness. I mean, we’re stopping economic productivity and doing ourselves a lot of economic harm – to what end? This is where the ideology is coming in and it’s creating this huge spike in prices which are going to continue to go up if this is the case and as I say if we get blackouts over the next couple of years, I think people will rightly be very angry at the government.
JOHN STANLEY:
Yep, we’ll see how this pans out, it’s going to be the story of the next couple of years. I’m pressed for time, but I have had listeners actually ask me and the whole nuclear issue comes up and you’ve opened up the discussion on that, but people are saying, do you regret – and you weren’t in charge – but do you regret the previous government’s, the Coalition government, not earlier embracing nuclear, at least a discussion about nuclear?
PETER DUTTON:
I think we should have had a discussion about nuclear years ago. I mean, Bob Hawke was strongly in favour of nuclear, it was just not possible with the left of the Labor Party and Anthony Albanese obviously is from the left of the Labor Party. John Howard is strongly in favour of nuclear. So, I think frankly, this is something we should have adopted…
JOHN STANLEY:
Because he brought the ban in didn’t he? John Howard’s government brought it in?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, as part of a deal in the Senate, it wasn’t because of any ideological point of view, it was more pragmatism. But John, look, the small modular reactors, I just ask people to search it, google it, have a look at a small modular reactor. I think the image for a lot of Australians of nuclear is something of the ‘70s or ‘80s. It’s like comparing an XA Falcon to a Mercedes Benz that you drive off the showroom floor today – it’s chalk and cheese. It’s safe, it’s zero emissions and it can be delivered at a cheaper price. Why we can’t have a discussion in our country about it is beyond me.
Now John, just quickly, I know you’ve got a great cause today, mate. I just think anybody who can donate should and I’m going to jump online in a second and donate to the cause, because I think the work that St Vinnies do is quite incredible, so thank you for supporting such a good cause.
JOHN STANLEY:
Yeah look, in your days as a police officer, I know you’ve seen this. You’ve seen the impact that this has on families and the very devastating impact, particularly at this time of year. So, I appreciate you saying that, thank you so much. If we don’t talk before Christmas, have a good Christmas and I’m sure you’ll be on this radio station many times in the New Year. Thank you.
PETER DUTTON:
Pleasure, mate. Take care. Have a great Christmas. Thank you.
[ends]